Next, we should deploy a Service that sits in front of the backend Pods. As a recap, every backend Pod inside the backend Deployment will have its own IP address, but these addresses can change as Pods are destroyed and created. Having a Service that sits in front of these Pods allow other parts of the application to access these backend Pods in a consistent manner.

Create a new manifest file at ./manifests/backend/service.yaml with the following content:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: backend
  labels:
    app: backend
spec:
  selector:
    app: backend
  ports:

  - port: 8080
    name: api
  - port: 8100
    name: docs

And deploy it using kubectl apply:

$ kubectl apply -f ./manifests/backend/service.yaml
service "backend" created

$ kubectl get services
NAME            TYPE        CLUSTER-IP     EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)             AGE
backend         ClusterIP   10.32.187.38   <none>        8080/TCP,8100/TCP   4s
elasticsearch   ClusterIP   None           <none>        9200/TCP,9300/TCP   1d
kubernetes      ClusterIP   10.32.0.1      <none>        443/TCP             1d

Our backend Service is now reachable through its Cluster IP (10.32.187.38, in our example). However, that is a private IP address, accessible only within the cluster. We want our API to be available externally – to the wider internet. To do this, we need to look at one final Kubernetes Object—Ingress.