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Expose Pod Information to Containers Through Environment Variables
This page shows how a Pod can use environment variables to expose information about itself to containers running in the Pod, using the downward API. You can use environment variables to expose Pod fields, container fields, or both.
In Kubernetes, there are two ways to expose Pod and container fields to a running container:
- Environment variables, as explained in this task
- Volume files
Together, these two ways of exposing Pod and container fields are called the downward API.
As Services are the primary mode of communication between containerized applications managed by Kubernetes, it is helpful to be able to discover them at runtime.
Read more about accessing Services here.
Before you begin
You need to have a Kubernetes cluster, and the kubectl command-line tool must be configured to communicate with your cluster. It is recommended to run this tutorial on a cluster with at least two nodes that are not acting as control plane hosts. If you do not already have a cluster, you can create one by using minikube or you can use one of these Kubernetes playgrounds:
Use Pod fields as values for environment variables
In this part of exercise, you create a Pod that has one container, and you project Pod-level fields into the running container as environment variables.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: dapi-envars-fieldref
spec:
containers:
- name: test-container
image: registry.k8s.io/busybox
command: [ "sh", "-c"]
args:
- while true; do
echo -en '\n';
printenv MY_NODE_NAME MY_POD_NAME MY_POD_NAMESPACE;
printenv MY_POD_IP MY_POD_SERVICE_ACCOUNT;
sleep 10;
done;
env:
- name: MY_NODE_NAME
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: spec.nodeName
- name: MY_POD_NAME
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: metadata.name
- name: MY_POD_NAMESPACE
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: metadata.namespace
- name: MY_POD_IP
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: status.podIP
- name: MY_POD_SERVICE_ACCOUNT
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: spec.serviceAccountName
restartPolicy: Never
In that manifest, you can see five environment variables. The env
field is an array of
environment variable definitions.
The first element in the array specifies that the MY_NODE_NAME environment
variable gets its value from the Pod's spec.nodeName field. Similarly, the
other environment variables get their names from Pod fields.
Create the Pod:
kubectl apply -f https://k8s.io/examples/pods/inject/dapi-envars-pod.yaml
Verify that the container in the Pod is running:
# If the new Pod isn't yet healthy, rerun this command a few times.
kubectl get pods
View the container's logs:
kubectl logs dapi-envars-fieldref
The output shows the values of selected environment variables:
minikube
dapi-envars-fieldref
default
172.17.0.4
default
To see why these values are in the log, look at the command and args fields
in the configuration file. When the container starts, it writes the values of
five environment variables to stdout. It repeats this every ten seconds.
Next, get a shell into the container that is running in your Pod:
kubectl exec -it dapi-envars-fieldref -- sh
In your shell, view the environment variables:
# Run this in a shell inside the container
printenv
The output shows that certain environment variables have been assigned the values of Pod fields:
MY_POD_SERVICE_ACCOUNT=default
...
MY_POD_NAMESPACE=default
MY_POD_IP=172.17.0.4
...
MY_NODE_NAME=minikube
...
MY_POD_NAME=dapi-envars-fieldref
Use container fields as values for environment variables
In the preceding exercise, you used information from Pod-level fields as the values for environment variables. In this next exercise, you are going to pass fields that are part of the Pod definition, but taken from the specific container rather than from the Pod overall.
Here is a manifest for another Pod that again has just one container:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: dapi-envars-resourcefieldref
spec:
containers:
- name: test-container
image: registry.k8s.io/busybox:1.24
command: [ "sh", "-c"]
args:
- while true; do
echo -en '\n';
printenv MY_CPU_REQUEST MY_CPU_LIMIT;
printenv MY_MEM_REQUEST MY_MEM_LIMIT;
sleep 10;
done;
resources:
requests:
memory: "32Mi"
cpu: "125m"
limits:
memory: "64Mi"
cpu: "250m"
env:
- name: MY_CPU_REQUEST
valueFrom:
resourceFieldRef:
containerName: test-container
resource: requests.cpu
- name: MY_CPU_LIMIT
valueFrom:
resourceFieldRef:
containerName: test-container
resource: limits.cpu
- name: MY_MEM_REQUEST
valueFrom:
resourceFieldRef:
containerName: test-container
resource: requests.memory
- name: MY_MEM_LIMIT
valueFrom:
resourceFieldRef:
containerName: test-container
resource: limits.memory
restartPolicy: Never
In this manifest, you can see four environment variables. The env
field is an array of
environment variable definitions.
The first element in the array specifies that the MY_CPU_REQUEST environment
variable gets its value from the requests.cpu field of a container named
test-container. Similarly, the other environment variables get their values
from fields that are specific to this container.
Create the Pod:
kubectl apply -f https://k8s.io/examples/pods/inject/dapi-envars-container.yaml
Verify that the container in the Pod is running:
# If the new Pod isn't yet healthy, rerun this command a few times.
kubectl get pods
View the container's logs:
kubectl logs dapi-envars-resourcefieldref
The output shows the values of selected environment variables:
1
1
33554432
67108864
What's next
- Read Defining Environment Variables for a Container
- Read the
specAPI definition for Pod. This includes the definition of Container (part of Pod). - Read the list of available fields that you can expose using the downward API.
Read about Pods, containers and environment variables in the legacy API reference: