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In this lesson, you’ll learn how to expose your application Pods in Kubernetes by creating a Service of type NodePort. Services provide stable endpoints for accessing your workloads and enable load balancing across Pods.

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Prerequisites

Verify that your Deployment is running and has created Pods: 
kubectl get deployment
NAME               READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
myapp-deployment   6/6     6            6           23m
You should see 6/6 READY, meaning six Pods are available.

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Step 1: Define the Service

Create a directory called service (optional) and add a file named service-definition.yaml: 
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: myapp-service
spec:
  type: NodePort
  selector:
    app: myapp
  ports:
    - port: 80
      targetPort: 80
      nodePort: 30004

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Service Specification Breakdown

FieldDescriptionExample
typeService exposure method (ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer)NodePort
selectorMatches Pods by labelapp: myapp
ports.portPort exposed inside the cluster80
ports.targetPortPort on the Pod that receives traffic80
ports.nodePortPort on each Node for external access (30000–32767)30004
NodePort Services allocate a port between 30000 and 32767. If you omit nodePort, Kubernetes assigns one automatically.
Save the file, then apply it: 
kubectl apply -f service/service-definition.yaml

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Step 2: Verify the Service

Run the following command to list Services in the current namespace: 
kubectl get svc
Example output: 
NAME            TYPE        CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)         AGE
kubernetes      ClusterIP   10.96.0.1       <none>        443/TCP         24h
myapp-service   NodePort    10.101.76.121   <none>        80:30004/TCP    5s
  • CLUSTER-IP: Internal IP of the Service.
  • 80:30004/TCP: Maps Service port 80 to NodePort 30004.

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Step 3: Access the Application

There are two ways to reach your application:
  1. Using your node’s IP address: 
    minikube ip   # If you're on Minikube
    Then open your browser at 
    http://<NODE_IP>:30004
  2. Using Minikube’s service tunnel: 
    minikube service myapp-service --url
    This outputs a URL such as: 
    http://192.168.99.101:30004
Exposing a Service via NodePort makes it accessible externally on the node’s network. Ensure your firewall rules and security groups are configured appropriately.
Open the URL in your browser. You should see the default NGINX welcome page:
The image shows a default "Welcome to nginx!" page, indicating that the nginx web server is successfully installed and running, but further configuration is required.

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Next Steps

  • Explore other Service types such as ClusterIP and LoadBalancer.
  • Learn about Ingress resources for advanced HTTP routing.
  • Consult the Kubernetes Services documentation for more details.

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