Service Discovery and Networking in Kubernetes

Course Description

This course provides a comprehensive guide to understanding how applications communicate within a Kubernetes cluster and with the outside world. You will dive deep into the fundamentals of Kubernetes networking, demystifying how Services provide stable endpoints for your dynamic Pods. Through a series of practical, hands-on labs, you will learn to implement the core Kubernetes Service types: ClusterIP for internal communication, NodePort for direct node access, and LoadBalancer for exposing applications externally in a cloud environment. By the end of this course, you'll have the practical skills to configure, manage, and troubleshoot networking for your containerized applications, ensuring reliable and secure service-to-service communication.

Who is this course for

This course is designed for individuals who know how to deploy applications on Kubernetes and now need to master how to connect them. It is ideal for:

• DevOps Engineers & SREs: Who are responsible for the networking and service discovery aspects of a Kubernetes cluster.

• Cloud Engineers: Who deploy and manage cloud-native applications and need to integrate them with cloud provider load balancers.

• Network Administrators: Who are extending their skills to container networking and Kubernetes.

• Software Developers: Who build microservices and need to understand how they will discover and communicate with each other inside a cluster.

Course Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:

• Explain Kubernetes Services: Articulate the role of a Service in providing a stable abstraction for a set of Pods.

• Implement Internal Communication: Create and configure a ClusterIP Service for secure, internal-only communication between applications.

• Expose Services via Nodes: Use a NodePort Service to expose an application on a static port on each cluster node for testing or direct access.

• Integrate with Cloud Load Balancers: Deploy a LoadBalancer Service to provision an external load balancer for exposing your applications to the internet.

• Choose the Right Service Type: Compare and contrast ClusterIP, NodePort, and LoadBalancer to select the appropriate type for various real-world scenarios.

Prerequisites

To succeed in this course, you must have:

1. Proficiency with Kubernetes Workloads: You should be comfortable creating and managing Pods and Deployments using kubectl.

2. Basic Networking Knowledge: A fundamental understanding of networking concepts like IP addresses, ports, DNS, and load balancing is required.

3. A Working Kubernetes Cluster: You need access to a Kubernetes environment (like Minikube, kind, or a cloud provider's managed Kubernetes service) to perform the hands-on labs.

Course outline

Section 01. Introduction to Kubernetes Services

1. Introduction to Services

2. Code Example: The Anatomy of a Service Manifest File

Section 02. Cluster IP

1. Introduction to the ClusterIP Service Type

2. Hands-on Lab: Creating a ClusterIP Service

3. Hands-on Lab: Observing Load Balancing with a ClusterIP Service

Section 03. NodePort

1. Understanding the NodePort Service

2. Hands-on Lab: Creating a NodePort Service for an Nginx Deployment

Section 04. LoadBalancer

1. Introduction to the LoadBalancer Service

2. Hands-on Lab: Deploying a LoadBalancer Service

3. Comparison of Different Service Types

Testimonials