Kubernetes Dashboard

Kubernetes Dashboard is a web-based user interface developed by Kubernetes, an open-source project, for managing and monitoring Kubernetes clusters. According to the vendor, this tool is designed to simplify the deployment of containerized applications, troubleshoot issues, and efficiently manage cluster resources. It is intended for use by companies of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises. Professionals in various industries, including DevOps Engineers, System Administrators, Cloud Engineers, Software Developers, and IT Operations teams, can benefit from the capabilities offered by Kubernetes Dashboard.

Key Features

Deploying containerized applications: According to the vendor, Kubernetes Dashboard provides a user-friendly deploy wizard that simplifies the process of creating and deploying containerized applications to a Kubernetes cluster. Users can specify application details such as the application name, container image URL, number of pods, and service options. Advanced options are available for specifying labels, namespaces, image pull secrets, resource requirements, run commands, environment variables, and more. Users can also upload YAML or JSON manifest files to define their application configurations.

Accessing the Dashboard UI: Kubernetes Dashboard can be accessed through a web-based user interface. The vendor states that Dashboard deploys with RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) configuration by default to ensure the security of cluster data. Users can access the Dashboard UI by running the kubectl proxy command and accessing the provided URL. It is important to note that the UI can only be accessed from the machine where the command is executed.

Welcome view: According to the vendor, when accessing Dashboard on an empty cluster, users are presented with a welcome page that offers links to documentation and a button to deploy the first application. The welcome view also displays system applications running in the kube-system namespace.

Navigation: Kubernetes Dashboard provides a navigation menu that allows users to easily switch between different views and categories. The navigation menu includes options for cluster and namespace administrators, workloads, services, storage, config maps and secrets, and a logs viewer.

Admin overview: For cluster and namespace administrators, Dashboard offers an admin overview that lists nodes, namespaces, and persistent volumes. The node list view displays CPU and memory usage metrics aggregated across all nodes. The details view for nodes provides metrics, specifications, status, allocated resources, events, and the pods running on the node.

Workloads: The workloads view in Kubernetes Dashboard shows all applications running in the selected namespace. Applications are grouped by workload kind, such as deployments, replica sets, and stateful sets. Users can view detailed information about workloads, including status, specifications, relationships with other objects, and resource usage.

Services: Kubernetes Dashboard provides a services view that displays Kubernetes resources for exposing services to the external world and discovering them within a cluster. Users can view services, ingresses, internal endpoints, and external endpoints. The services view also shows the pods targeted by services.

Storage: According to the vendor, Kubernetes Dashboard includes a storage view that shows persistent volume claim resources used by applications for storing data. Users can view and manage persistent volume claims.

ConfigMaps and Secrets: Kubernetes Dashboard provides a view for managing config maps and secrets. Users can edit and manage config objects and view secrets, which are hidden by default.

Logs viewer: Kubernetes Dashboard includes a built-in logs viewer that allows users to drill down into logs from containers belonging to a single pod. According to the vendor, the logs viewer is accessible from pod lists and detail pages.