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Service

Expose an application running in your cluster behind a single outward-facing endpoint, even when the workload is split across multiple backends.

The Service API lets you provide a stable (long lived) IP address or hostname for a service implemented by one or more backend pods, where the individual pods making up the service can change over time.

Kubernetes automatically manages EndpointSlice objects to provide information about the pods currently backing a Service. Service also act like internal load balancer that will automatically chose which pod should receive traffic.

Service type​

There are multiple service type in kubernetes that allow us ot specify what kind of Service we want. The available type values and their behaviors are:

  • ClusterIP: Exposes the Service on a cluster-internal IP, the service only reachable from within the cluster. This is the default that is used if we don't explicitly specify a type for a Service. We can expose the Service to the public internet using an Ingress or a Gateway.
  • NodePort: Exposes the Service on each Node's IP at a static port (the NodePort). To make the node port available, Kubernetes sets up a cluster IP address, the same as if we had requested a Service of type: ClusterIP.
  • LoadBalancer: Exposes the Service externally using an external load balancer from cloud provider.
  • ExternalName: Maps the Service to the contents of the externalName field (for example, to the hostname api.foo.bar.example). The mapping configures our cluster's DNS server to return a CNAME record with that external hostname value. No proxying of any kind is set up.

type: ClusterIP​

Create new file service.yaml and put our service definition there.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: simple-go
spec:
  selector:
    app: simple-go
  ports:
  - protocol: TCP
    port: 8080
    targetPort: 8080

This definition will create a service that called simple-go which will expose our groups of pods into single endpoint using port 8080. We can choose which group of pods that this service point to using the selector that we define.

Remember previously in our deployment definition we define our spec template to have a label app: simple-go? That means all of the pods created by that deployment will have that label.

The controller for that Service continuously scans for Pods that match its selector, and then makes any necessary updates to the set of EndpointSlices for the Service.

In this service definition we set the spec selector to app: simple-go so our service will represent all of our simple-go app pods.

Lets apply it using command kubectl apply -f service.yaml and check it using kubectl get service.

➜ kubectl apply -f service.yaml   
service/simple-go created
➜ kubectl get service
NAME         TYPE        CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)    AGE
kubernetes   ClusterIP   10.96.0.1        <none>        443/TCP    21d
simple-go    ClusterIP   10.106.119.159   <none>        8080/TCP   7s

Accessing Service​

There are multiple ways to access our service, the easiest way and should work on any OS is by using minikube service tunnel. To run service tunnel we can use command minikube service <service-name> --url.

➜ minikube service simple-go --url
😿  service default/simple-go has no node port
❗  Services [default/simple-go] have type "ClusterIP" not meant to be exposed, however for local development minikube allows you to access this !
http://127.0.0.1:64290
❗  Because you are using a Docker driver on darwin, the terminal needs to be open to run it.

We got an warning that our service don't have a NodePort, but it's ok for local development. The command output also have a URL for accessing our service, try access it using curl and it should return response from our app.

➜ curl http://127.0.0.1:64290
{"message":"Everything is fine!"}

type: NodePort​

If you set the type field to NodePort, the Kubernetes control plane allocates a port from a range specified by --service-node-port-range flag (default: 30000-32767). Each node proxies that port (the same port number on every Node) into your Service. Your Service reports the allocated port in its .spec.ports[*].nodePort field.

Using a NodePort gives you the freedom to set up your own load balancing solution, to configure environments that are not fully supported by Kubernetes, or even to expose one or more nodes' IP addresses directly.

In production if we want to expose our service directly we need to explicitly change our service type to NodePort. We can do this by adding type: NodePort into the spec section of our service definition.

Changing service type to NodePort also fix warning that we previously got when running minikube service tunnel.

type: LoadBalancer​

A LoadBalancer Service in Kubernetes exposes our service externally using a cloud provider’s load balancer. It automatically provisions a public IP address and distributes incoming traffic across the backend pods.

How it works in general (actual implementation may varies depends on cloud provider):

  • A LoadBalancer service gets an external IP.
  • It forwards traffic to pods inside the cluster.
  • The cloud provider (AWS, GCP, Azure) manages the external load balancer.

We can try this in minikube using tunnel. First let's create a new file service-loadbalancer.yaml and put below service definition there.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: simple-go-loadbalancer
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  selector:
    app: simple-go
  ports:
    - protocol: TCP
      port: 8080
      targetPort: 8080

Now lest apply check it using kubectl get svc command.

➜ kubectl apply -f service-loadbalacer.yaml 
service/simple-go-loadbalancer created
➜ kubectl get svc                          
NAME                     TYPE           CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)          AGE
kubernetes               ClusterIP      10.96.0.1        <none>        443/TCP          25h
postgres                 ClusterIP      10.100.111.204   <none>        5432/TCP         5h33m
simple-go                ClusterIP      10.96.229.141    <none>        8080/TCP         58m
simple-go-loadbalancer   LoadBalancer   10.102.155.101   <pending>     8080:31512/TCP   2s

As you can see above the EXTERNAL-IP of our load balancer service that we just created is still in <pending>. Lets open new terminal and run minikube tunnel and check the service again.

➜ kubectl get svc
NAME                     TYPE           CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)          AGE
kubernetes               ClusterIP      10.96.0.1        <none>        443/TCP          25h
postgres                 ClusterIP      10.100.111.204   <none>        5432/TCP         5h34m
simple-go                ClusterIP      10.96.229.141    <none>        8080/TCP         59m
simple-go-loadbalancer   LoadBalancer   10.102.155.101   127.0.0.1     8080:31512/TCP   41s

After running minikube tunnel we can see that our load balancer service that we just created get assigned external IP. And we can access it from our local using curl.

➜ curl http://localhost:8080
{"message":"Everything is fine!"}

type: ExternalName​

A Service ExternalName is used to redirect traffic to an external DNS name. Instead of exposing Kubernetes pods, it acts like a DNS alias.

  • Maps a service name to an external DNS name.
  • Used for legacy services, databases, or APIs hosted outside the cluster.
  • Does not create a ClusterIP, just a DNS alias (CNAME).

Lets try this. Create new file called service-external.yaml and put below service definition there. This will route any request or traffic to my-external-service to external example.com.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: my-external-service
spec:
  type: ExternalName
  externalName: example.com

Now lets apply and execute nslookup from inside any pod that you have.

➜ kubectl apply -f service-external.yaml 
service/my-external-service created
➜ kubectl exec simple-go-5dc4557ffc-c24fp -- nslookup my-external-service
Server:   10.96.0.10
Address:  10.96.0.10:53

** server can't find my-external-service.cluster.local: NXDOMAIN
** server can't find my-external-service.svc.cluster.local: NXDOMAIN
** server can't find my-external-service.svc.cluster.local: NXDOMAIN
** server can't find my-external-service.cluster.local: NXDOMAIN

my-external-service.default.svc.cluster.local canonical name = example.com
Name: example.com
Address: 2600:1406:bc00:53::b81e:94ce
Name: example.com
Address: 2600:1408:ec00:36::1736:7f24
Name: example.com
Address: 2600:1406:3a00:21::173e:2e66
Name: example.com
Address: 2600:1406:3a00:21::173e:2e65
Name: example.com
Address: 2600:1408:ec00:36::1736:7f31
Name: example.com
Address: 2600:1406:bc00:53::b81e:94c8

my-external-service.default.svc.cluster.local canonical name = example.com
Name: example.com
Address: 23.192.228.80
Name: example.com
Address: 23.215.0.136
Name: example.com
Address: 23.192.228.84
Name: example.com
Address: 96.7.128.175
Name: example.com
Address: 23.215.0.138
Name: example.com
Address: 96.7.128.198

command terminated with exit code 1

References​