What’s the difference between ClusterIP, NodePort and LoadBalancer service types in Kubernetes?

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A ClusterIP exposes the following:

• spec.clusterIp:spec.ports[*].port

You can only access this service while inside the cluster. It is accessible from its spec.clusterIp port. If a spec.ports[*].targetPort is set it will route from the port to the targetPort. The CLUSTER-IP you get when calling kubectl get services is the IP assigned to this service within the cluster internally.

A NodePort exposes the following:

• <NodeIP>:spec.ports[*].nodePort
• spec.clusterIp:spec.ports[*].port

If you access this service on a nodePort from the node’s external IP, it will route the request to spec.clusterIp:spec.ports[*].port, which will in turn route it to your spec.ports[*].targetPort, if set. This service can also be accessed in the same way as ClusterIP.

Your NodeIPs are the external IP addresses of the nodes. You cannot access your service from spec.clusterIp:spec.ports[*].nodePort.

A LoadBalancer exposes the following:

• spec.loadBalancerIp:spec.ports[*].port
• <NodeIP>:spec.ports[*].nodePort
• spec.clusterIp:spec.ports[*].port

You can access this service from your load balancer’s IP address, which routes your request to a nodePort, which in turn routes the request to the clusterIP port. You can access this service as you would a NodePort or a ClusterIP service as well.