etcd (https://coreos.com/etcd/) is the distributed key-value data store. It can be accessed via the RESTful API to perform CRUD operations over the network. Kubernetes uses etcd as the main data store.

You can explore the Kubernetes configuration and status in etcd (/registry) using the curl command, as follows:

//example: etcd server is localhost and default port is 4001
# curl -L http://127.0.0.1:4001/v2/keys/registry
{"action":"get","node":{"key":"/registry","dir":true,"nodes":[{"key":"/registry/namespaces","dir":true,"modifiedIndex":6,"createdIndex":6},{"key":"/registry/pods","dir":true,"modifiedIndex":187,"createdIndex":187},{"key":"/registry/clusterroles","dir":true,"modifiedIndex":196,"createdIndex":196},{"key":"/registry/replicasets","dir":true,"modifiedIndex":178,"createdIndex":178},{"key":"/registry/limitranges","dir":true,"modifiedIndex":202,"createdIndex":202},{"key":"/registry/storageclasses","dir":true,"modifiedIndex":215,"createdIndex":215},{"key":"/registry/apiregistration.k8s.io","dir":true,"modifiedIndex":7,"createdIndex":7},{"key":"/registry/serviceaccounts","dir":true,"modifiedIndex":70,"createdIndex":70},{"key":"/registry/secrets","dir":true,"modifiedIndex":71,"createdIndex":71},{"key":"/registry/deployments","dir":true,"modifiedIndex":177,"createdIndex":177},{"key":"/registry/services","dir":true,"modifiedIndex":13,"createdIndex":13},{"key":"/registry/configmaps","dir":true,"modifiedIndex":52,"createdIndex":52},{"key":"/registry/ranges","dir":true,"modifiedIndex":4,"createdIndex":4},{"key":"/registry/minions","dir":true,"modifiedIndex":58,"createdIndex":58},{"key":"/registry/clusterrolebindings","dir":true,"modifiedIndex":171,"createdIndex":171}],"modifiedIndex":4,"createdIndex":4}}