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Deploying kube-dns in a Kubernetes Cluster

Pods can communicate with each other and with services via their IP addresses, once networking has been set up in a Kubernetes cluster. But it is easier to locate other pods and services by hostname, since IP addresses can change. In order to do this, the cluster requires a DNS service. In this learning activity, you will learn how to deploy *kube-dns* to a cluster in order to provide DNS service to pods.

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Lab Info
Level
Intermediate
Last updated
Sep 04, 2025
Duration
1h 0m

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Table of Contents
  1. Challenge

    Deploy kube-dns to the cluster.

    You can deploy kube-dns to the cluster like so:

    kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ACloudGuru-Resources/kthw-lab-scripts/master/kube-dns.yaml
    

    Verify that the kube-dns pod starts up correctly:

    kubectl get pods -l k8s-app=kube-dns -n kube-system
    

    You should get output showing the kube-dns pod. It should look something like this:

    NAME                        READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
    kube-dns-598d7bf7d4-spbmj   3/3       Running   0          36s
    

    Make sure that 3/3 containers are ready and that the pod has a status of Running. It may take a moment for the pod to be fully up and running, so if READY is not 3/3 at first, check again after a few moments.

  2. Challenge

    Test the DNS by creating a service, and perform a DNS lookup for service from another pod using the service name

    Test the DNS by creating a service, and access the service from another pod using the service name.

    Create a simple service like so:

    kubectl run nginx --image=nginx
    
    kubectl expose deployment nginx --port 80
    

    Get a list of services:

    kubectl get svc
    

    You should see the nginx service listed.

    Spin up a busybox pod for testing and get the pod name:

    kubectl run busybox --image=busybox:1.28 --command -- sleep 3600
    
    POD_NAME=$(kubectl get pods -l run=busybox -o jsonpath="{.items[0].metadata.name}")
    

    Perform a DNS lookup of the nginx service from within the busybox pod to verify that DNS is working:

    kubectl exec $POD_NAME -- nslookup nginx
    

    You should get output that looks like this:

    Server:    10.32.0.10
    Address 1: 10.32.0.10 kube-dns.kube-system.svc.cluster.local
    
    Name:      nginx
    Address 1: 10.32.0.248 nginx.default.svc.cluster.local
    
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