Reach the app

The Service's ClusterIP is only reachable from inside the cluster. To reach it from your laptop you use kubectl port-forward, which tunnels a local port to the Service.

Forward a local port

kubectl port-forward service/web 8080:8080

Leave this command running in its terminal. It forwards localhost:8080 on your machine to port 8080 on the web Service.

Send a request

Open a second terminal and run:

curl localhost:8080   # the nginx welcome HTML

You should receive the nginx welcome page HTML, confirming the full path works:

curl → localhost:8080 → kubectl tunnel → Service web :8080 → Pod :80 → nginx

Checkpoint: curl localhost:8080 returns HTML containing Welcome to nginx!.

Press Ctrl+C in the first terminal to stop the port-forward when you are done.

Next: 07 Teardown