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---
reviewers:
- mikedanese
- thockin
title: Container Environment Variables
content_template: templates/concept
weight: 20
---
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This page describes the resources available to Containers in the Container environment.
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## Container environment
The Kubernetes Container environment provides several important resources to Containers:
* A filesystem, which is a combination of an [image](/docs/concepts/containers/images/) and one or more [volumes](/docs/concepts/storage/volumes/).
* Information about the Container itself.
* Information about other objects in the cluster.
### Container information
The *hostname* of a Container is the name of the Pod in which the Container is running.
It is available through the `hostname` command or the
[`gethostname`](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/gethostname.2.html)
function call in libc.
The Pod name and namespace are available as environment variables through the
[downward API](/docs/tasks/inject-data-application/downward-api-volume-expose-pod-information/).
User defined environment variables from the Pod definition are also available to the Container,
as are any environment variables specified statically in the Docker image.
### Cluster information
A list of all services that were running when a Container was created is available to that Container as environment variables.
Those environment variables match the syntax of Docker links.
For a service named *foo* that maps to a Container named *bar*,
the following variables are defined:
```shell
FOO_SERVICE_HOST=<the host the service is running on>
FOO_SERVICE_PORT=<the port the service is running on>
```
Services have dedicated IP addresses and are available to the Container via DNS,
if [DNS addon](http://releases.k8s.io/{{< param "githubbranch" >}}/cluster/addons/dns/) is enabled. 
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* Learn more about [Container lifecycle hooks](/docs/concepts/containers/container-lifecycle-hooks/).
* Get hands-on experience
[attaching handlers to Container lifecycle events](/docs/tasks/configure-pod-container/attach-handler-lifecycle-event/).
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