can two web services be hosted in a kubernetes pod?

11/13/2019

Is is possible to have two web services in a single pod in kubernetes. If yes how will load balancer will handle it? One more question, does load balancer talk directly to pod or container inside pod? If its talk to pod doesn't the route increase like first, LB->pod, pod->container. As pod is in between. I am new to Kubernetes and had these doubts.

-- Sid
docker
docker-compose
google-kubernetes-engine
kubectl
kubernetes

3 Answers

11/13/2019

You can run multiple containers on the same pod, if the services are tightly coupled. For example, if you have a web server and a SQL database.

If the web services are not tightly coupled, you would likely want to put them in different pods.

Then you need to deploy a service and expose it to make you web service reachable whether from inside the cluster or from outside depending on the service type.

To load balance between your services you would need an ingress controller.

-- Khalid K
Source: StackOverflow

11/13/2019

You can run multiple containers inside a single pod, but using that to host two separate services is probably not the intended use.

An example case for running multiple containers inside the same pod is one container, a so-called sidecar, that's running some form of application to generate files (e.g. some sync tool), while the main service uses those files somehow. This could be a web server serving static files that the sync tool pulls from somewhere.

Back to your question, since a pod only has one IP, you can only use each port once. A port on a container corresponds directly to a port on the pod. So while you can theoretically run two containers with a web service, you will need to use two different ports. As such, the load balancer would need to address those two ports separately.

If you want to run multiple copies of the same service for load balancing, you should use multiple pods, ideally managed by a deployment, and use a service (cluster IP for internal or load balancer for external) to distribute traffic.

-- FallenWarrior
Source: StackOverflow

11/13/2019

Here are some answers that will help you.

- A pod is a running instance of a container. You can have two containers / two web services running in side a Pod, although its ideal to run one under a POD.

- When you bring up your containers you create ingress / LoadBalancer routes to your services.

- Hence when you have two web services running inside your pod, each would have published their service at two different service ingress.

- Ideally two routes inside the POD for these services, and a small service discovery to identify them inside.

- This is one reason we prefer running one container per POD.
- Request you to read Kubernetes in Action book to get more clear insight into.

-- Srini M
Source: StackOverflow