Skip to content

User Interface

Jump to bottom
rgaudin edited this page Jan 28, 2022 · 2 revisions

While the setup and general maintenance of the Cluster is done using kubectl, we are interested in serving some use cases directly using a web UI, as was possible with Sloppy (in order or importance)

  • restart an app (or single Pod)
  • change environment variables for an app.
  • access recent logs
  • check resources for apps
  • access a shell for quick debug

Rancher

  • Good & Free option for on-prem self-managed
  • Handles k8s upgrades
  • doesn't work with latest k8s
  • still uses docker which is now deprecated
  • uses a script to bootstrap itself on the workers
  • Has a Cluster Explorer (similar to k8s dashboard)
  • Doesn't create storageclasses automatically
  • Installs itself using script as well
  • https://rancher.com/products/rancher

Kubeapps

  • Nice auto-form for installing from Helm
  • Only knows about helm installed-apps, nothing else
  • Displays some installed-app related info
  • Very limited info and no management beyond deploy/upgrade of resources
  • Most an helm catalog GUI
  • https://kubeapps.com/

Lens

  • Desktop app (based on Electron)
  • works transparently with kubeconfig files
  • Displays all kubectl or k8s dashboard info
  • Provides easy access to all kubectl actions such as:
    • debug to run ephemeral containers on Pod or node
    • logs access for all containers in Pods
    • Restarting or scaling apps
    • Viewing and changing everything (secret, pods, roles, etc)
  • Can display metrics, should the Cluster be using Prometheus
  • https://k8slens.dev

Octant

  • Web UI
  • Nice and complete visualizer over all of kubectl's resources
  • Doesn't provide edits nor actions
  • https://octant.dev/

We are thus starting with Lens, meaning no additional setup on Cluster.

Clone this wiki locally