Unlocking Kubernetes Networking

Mastering Kubernetes Services: The Gateway to Efficient Application Exposure

From ClusterIP to ExternalName: Navigating the Types of Kubernetes Services for Optimal Application Connectivity

Photo by Florian Krumm on Unsplash

Table of Contents
ClusterIP
NodePort
LoadBalancer
ExternalName

In Kubernetes (k8s), services are used to expose applications running on a set of Pods as a network service. The main idea behind using services is to provide a consistent and stable way of accessing the applications, regardless of the changes in the Pod IPs or configurations.

There are several types of services in Kubernetes designed for different use cases and exposure levels:

ClusterIP

The ClusterIP service type is the default, and only provides access internally (except if manually creating an external endpoint). The range of ClusterIP used is defined via an API server startup option.

The kubectl proxy command creates a local service to access a ClusterIP. This can be useful for troubleshooting or development work.