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Services

Description

A Service exposes a set of pods as a network endpoint.

Services provide a stable IP address and DNS name for accessing pods.

Since pods are ephemeral and may be recreated, services ensure consistent connectivity.

Service Types

Type Description
ClusterIP Internal cluster access
NodePort Exposes service on a node port
LoadBalancer External load balancer
ExternalName Maps to external DNS name

Example Service

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: web-service
spec:
  selector:
    app: web
  ports:
  - port: 80
    targetPort: 80
  type: ClusterIP

Common Commands

List services: 

kubectl get services

Describe a service: 

kubectl describe service web-service

Use Cases

Services are used for:

  • exposing applications inside the cluster
  • providing load balancing
  • enabling service discovery
  • Pods
  • Deployments