What are the differences between enabling SSH access to a pod and a service in Kubernetes?

In Kubernetes, SSH access is inherently directed at individual containers within a pod, not at the pod itself or at a service.
Therefore, comparing SSH access to a pod and to a service is meaningless.

  • A pod is the smallest deployable unit in Kubernetes and can contain one or more containers.
  • A service is an abstraction that defines a logical set of pods and a policy by which to access them.
  • SSH access is targeted at containers within a pod to execute commands
  • Services manage network access to pods but do not handle SSH connections directly.