To prevent intermittent container startup issues, follow these troubleshooting steps:

1. Disable Node Auto-Provisioning (NAP) - avoiding automatic changes or unexpected resource allocation.

2. Cordon and drain node - Cordoning a node marks it as unschedulable, preventing new Pods from being assigned, while draining evicts the workloads running on those nodes without disruption.

3. Delete actual node

If you want to keep using NAP it is recommended to use a custom boot disk and SSD.