Kubernetes Access External Services

There are often times when you will need to access an external service in Kubernetes but still want to use a static name.

For example, you have an external database like an AWS RDS (MySQL) hosted by Amazon. In your application, you simply want to refer to this database by the name mysql and not the ful URL of the name that AWS assigns to it.

You can add an external service mapping a hostname or by an IP.

Mapping by a hostname (CNAME)

You want your application to use the hostname mysql which will redirect it to mysql–instance1.123456789012.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com. We can have Kubernetes set this CNAME.

kind: Service
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: mysql
spec:
  type: ExternalName
  externalName: mysql–instance1.123456789012.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com

Now, if you go to your pod, you can look up mysql and see that it points to mysql–instance1.123456789012.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com:

dig mysql

Mapping a hostname to an IP

You want your application to use the hostname mysql which will redirect to an IP address. We can have Kubernetes set this up for us:

---
kind: "Service"
apiVersion: "v1"
metadata:
  name: "mysql"
spec:
  ports:
    -
      name: "mysql"
      protocol: "TCP"
      port: 3306
      targetPort: 3306
      nodePort: 0
---
kind: "Endpoints"
apiVersion: "v1"
metadata:
  name: "mysql"
subsets:
  -
    addresses:
      -
        ip: "1.1.1.1"
    ports:
      -
        port: 3306
        name: "mysql"

In your pod, you can check the connectivity. This will map the hostname mysql to the IP address 1.1.1.1.

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