<p>I would like to know if port-forward blocks other requests to the pod like redis, mongo, etc.</p>

<p>If I use kubectl port-foward command with mongo port for example, the mongo server will not receive the data ? </p>

BruceOverflow
<p>As per your comment, <code>kubectl port-forward</code> does not block any exposed traffic to the target pod. So adding portforward won't affect others.</p>

<p>What <code>portforward</code> does is simply making a specific request to the API server. (see <a href="https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/generated/kubernetes-api/v1.11/#create-connect-portforward-pod-v1-core" rel="nofollow noreferrer">doc</a>)</p>

<p>Going further, I don't think <code>port-forward</code> makes pod more "dangerous" (vulnerable against security), however it is generally used for debugging to scope into the pod, not to expose a service in the pod. Use <code>Nodeport</code> service for production.
Plus, <code>port-forward</code> has default <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47484312/kubectl-port-forwarding-timeout-issue">timeout setting</a> in kubelet.</p>
