Which service type is typically provided by the cloud provider and may vary by environment?

Which service type is typically provided by the cloud provider and may vary by environment?

• A. NodePort
• B. LoadBalancer
• C. ClusterIP
• D. ExternalName

Answer: (B)

External access to a service through a cloud-managed load balancer is provided by the LoadBalancer service type. This type asks the cloud provider to provision an external load balancer and assign a reachable IP, with the exact implementation varying by environment (AWS ELB/ALB, GCP Cloud Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer, or on-prem solutions like MetalLB). Other service types don’t rely on a cloud provider’s external LB: ClusterIP stays internal, NodePort exposes a port on each node, and ExternalName maps to an external DNS name without creating a load balancer. Hence, the LoadBalancer option best fits the description of being provided by the cloud provider and varying by environment.

External access to a service through a cloud-managed load balancer is provided by the LoadBalancer service type. This type asks the cloud provider to provision an external load balancer and assign a reachable IP, with the exact implementation varying by environment (AWS ELB/ALB, GCP Cloud Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer, or on-prem solutions like MetalLB). Other service types don’t rely on a cloud provider’s external LB: ClusterIP stays internal, NodePort exposes a port on each node, and ExternalName maps to an external DNS name without creating a load balancer. Hence, the LoadBalancer option best fits the description of being provided by the cloud provider and varying by environment.