Introduction to Service Account¶

A Service Account in kubernetes provides an identity for processes that run in a pod.

You use kubernetes Service Accounts when you need to manage kubernetes resources (nodes, pods, deployments etc.) from inside a pod.

To access kubernetes API Server you need an authentication token. The processes that are running inside your containers use a Service Account to authenticate with the API server.

Just like a user account represents a human, a Service Account represents and provides an identity to your pods.

Each pod you create has a Service Account assigned to it even if you don't explicitly provide a Service Account name. If you don't provide the Service Account name ubernetes will assign a default Service Account for the pod.