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From YouTube: A Walk Through the Kubernetes UI Landscape - Joaquim Rocha, Kinvolk & Henning Jacobs, Zalando SE
Description
Don’t miss out! Join us at our upcoming event: KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2021 Virtual from May 4–7, 2021. Learn more at https://kubecon.io. The conference features presentations from developers and end users of Kubernetes, Prometheus, Envoy, and all of the other CNCF-hosted projects.
A Walk Through the Kubernetes UI Landscape - Joaquim Rocha, Kinvolk & Henning Jacobs, Zalando SE
Working with Kubernetes clusters and workloads can be overwhelming, both for operators, as well as application developers. While kubectl is the de-facto standard interface to interact with Kubernetes' API, a graphical user interface can provide a better experience for newcomers and advanced users alike. This talk will look at the current landscape of Open Source Kubernetes web and desktop UIs, including Kubernetes Dashboard, Lens, Octant, Kubernetes Web View, and Headlamp. Particularly, how different dashboards are built, for what purpose they can be used, and how they compare in terms of functionality, so attendees can get the most out of the vast landscape of Kubernetes UIs.
https://sched.co/ekAd
A
A
Great,
so
without
further
ado,
what
are
we
here
to
talk
about?
So,
as
you
know,
kubernetes
is
a
complex
project
and
of
course
you
know
people
can
use
the
cube
ctl
or
keep
control
whatever
you
want
to
call
it.
But
a
way
to
make
things
simpler
for
everybody
is
to
use
graphical
user
interfaces.
So
there
are
lots
of
projects
out
there
and
we
are
here
to
talk
about
them.
So
we
have.
A
A
They
have
to
be
used
standalone,
so
you
know
not
needing
add-ons
or
control
plane
for
them
to
to
be
usable
and
they
can
run,
of
course,
either
locally
or
in
cluster,
but
they
have
to
be
just
just
that
just
running
standalone
and
they
have
to
have
a
graphical
user
interface
yeah.
Some
of
the
things
we
we
look
into
and
we'll
mention
this
is
the
installation.
A
So
it's
a
project
supposed
to
be
running
cluster
or
locally
on
your
desktop
or
you
know,
does
it
have
multiple
cluster
support,
or
does
it
only
manage
one
cluster
at
a
time
whether
it's
extensible
or
not,
read-only,
or
whether
you
can
read
and
write
and
other
things
we'll
talk
about?
So
you
see
these
icons
here
they
will
be
on
each
slide
in
case
we
don't
talk
about
this
directly.
You
will
know,
hopefully
what
it
means.
B
B
You
authenticate
with
a
service
account
token,
so
you
do
cube
ctl
proxy
and
then
still
need
to
copy
the
baritone
into
the
first
form.
It
provides
some
features
like
executing
into
ports,
logs
scaling,
workloads
and
editing
your
deployments,
for
example.
It
also
provides
a
nice
feature
for
searching
across
different
workloads
in
the
cluster,
so
you
can
quickly
find
what
you're
looking
for,
but
it
has
a
overall
a
relatively
limited
set
of
features,
and
it's
not
extensible.
B
A
A
Right
and
the
next
one
is
actually
you
know
it's.
It
has
many
similarities
with
with
the
the
official
kubernetes
dashboard,
so
it's
also
running
cluster.
It's
also
meant
to
to
only
manage
one
cluster
and
it's
it's
not
extensible
as
well.
So
this
is
called
kate
dash
and
it
started
as
a
project
by
someone
called
eric
herbranson.
A
I
hope
I
pronounce
his
name
correctly
and
it
was
stopped
for
a
while,
but
then
I
think
indeed
took
over
and
now
it's
managed
by
indeed
still
with
with
eric
on
the
project
as
as
far
as
I
can
see,
you
know
this
is
an
interesting
project
because,
like
I
said
it
provides
a
good
alternative
to
to
the
official
dashboard.
In
my
opinion-
and
it's
also,
it
also
feels
very
lightweight.
A
A
So
when
you're
editing
some
some
resource,
so
you
can-
and
you
don't
remember
exactly
when
what
things
go
here
and
there
you
can
just
quickly
look
into
it
yeah
and
one
things
that
well
a
difference
that,
with
with
the
official
one,
is
that
it
does
not
have
cluster
search
and
also
when
I
tried
it
with
a
view
only
token
it
kind
of
failed
to
start
the
the
you
know,
the
ui,
but
otherwise
it's
it's
a
good
project.
In
my
opinion,.
B
A
If
you
want
to
to
change
something
on
on
on
one
of
the
projects,
I
think
it
should
be
easier
to
do
it
on
git
dash,
just
because
the
code
base
seems
you
know
a
bit
smaller
than,
of
course,
a
project
that
has
been
here
for
a
while,
like
like
the
official
kubernetes
dashboard,
so
yeah
I'll
go
with
this
one.
I
think.
B
Yeah,
let's
have
a
look
at
another
project.
Cubious
qbs
is
quite
different
to
the
other
two
dashboards
we
saw
earlier
because
it's
really
about
seeing
app
config
and
state
and
yeah
checking
if
the
state
is
safe
and
following
some
of
the
rules
you
can
define
in
in
the
rule
editor
and
integrated
into
this
project.
So
it
really
helps
you
analyze
your
cluster.
You
can
define
custom
rules,
for
example,
that
you
don't
want
to
run
docker
latest
tag
or
special
settings,
for
example
requiring
memory
limits,
etc,
etc,
and
you
can
also
have
custom
marker
icons.
B
A
B
This
is
a
really
interesting
tool
for,
for
example,
platform
teams
to
define
compliance
rules
and
then
check
the
cluster
accordingly.
Another
very
interesting
feature
is
time
machine,
so
you
can
go
back
and
forth
into
in
time
and
see
when
something
changed
and,
for
example,
correlate
this
when
with
something
going
wrong
in
your
cluster,
so
for
example,
label
added
or
removed,
etc.
The
whole
tool
is
only
single
cluster
and
it
also
has
a
stripped
down
portable
version,
because
the
time
machine
uses
a
mysql
database
at
the
back
end.
B
A
B
Yeah,
I
guess
the
time
machine
is
a
really
interesting
feature
and
it
can
really
help
to
troubleshoot
if,
when
something
is
going
wrong
and
then
checking
what
was
changed
in
the
cluster
but
obviously
like
most
of
the
changes
should
be
done
via
cicd
and
maybe
ops.
So
all
the
changes
should
be
tracked
and
git,
but
you
might
also
use
something
like
postgres
operator
or
other
operator
which
also
changes
cluster
state.
So
the
time
machine
would
help
you
see
these
cluster
state
changes
which
are
not
reflected
in
git.
A
B
Yes,
octane:
that's
a
a
pretty
popular
tool,
it's
only
locally
available.
It
was
created
by
vmware.
It
has
a
quite
nice
ui
and
it's
created
for
developers
to
better
understand
the
complexity
for
of
kubernetes
clusters.
So
you
start
a
local
tool
tool
and
then
see
the
ui
in
your
browser,
and
it
has
some
interesting
features
like
this
object
graph.
So
you
see
resources
and
connected
resources
like
for
report,
the
service,
ingress,
secret,
etc,
and
it
has
a
very
nice
feature
of
port
forwarding.
B
Plugins
there's
also
a
recent
plugin
created
for
jenkins
x.
So
if
you
use
that
maybe
worth
checking
out,
it's
a
little
bit
sad
that
the
tool
doesn't
have
a
global
search.
So
you
cannot
just
search
for
something
in
the
in
the
cluster
like
what
is
integrated
in
kubernetes
dashboard
and
it
provides
access
to
multiple
clusters
you
defined
in
cubeconfig,
but
it
doesn't
have
any
cross
cluster
features.
A
B
And
I
think
it's
both,
but
I
certainly
can
see
some
advantages,
for
example
using
bookmarks,
because
if
you
use
a
standalone
tool,
then
you
often
have
not
a
feature
of
having
bookmarks
in
the
app
itself
and
with
octane
you
have
your
normal
browser.
You
can
bookmark,
for
example
your
deployment
or
your
workload.
You
usually
look
at
and
I
think
that's
pretty
neat,
so
you
can
reuse
features
from
the
browser.
A
So,
like
I
said
this
is
this
is
similar
to
to
auckland
in
the
way
that
it
runs
locally.
But
it's
it's
like
a
full
application
in
a
way
that
it
ships
its
own
web
view,
and
one
thing
that
I
really
really
like
is
that
the
the
so
the
the
user
interface
and
the
user
experience
is
really
nice.
It.
You
can
access
a
lot
of
information,
but
it
all
seems
to
be
very
well.
You
know
in
a
good
layout
and
very
well
thought
of.
A
B
A
So
both
are
similar,
that's
true
for
me,
I
would
probably
go
with
lens
just
because
I
I
think
you
know
in
terms
of
of
the
ui,
it
works
really
well,
and
not
only
it
looks
good,
but
it
actually,
you
know
the
way
things
are
laid
out
again
and
the
capabilities
you
have
are
really
good,
so
I
would
go
with
it
with
lens
for
sure
yeah
and
the
the
next
project
is
a
very
curious
one
that
is
different
from
the
rest.
It's
called
cubenav
and
yeah.
A
You
actually
see
an
entry
in
the
in
the
entry
itself
of
the
of
the
list
with
the
creation
date
or
something
so
that
so
so
yeah.
So
there
is
that
downside
I
would
say,
but
if
you're
looking
for
something
beyond
the
the
desktop,
this
would
be
a
solution.
I
think
one
thing
that
was
not
clear
was
how
to
authenticate
with
it.
So
I
think
it
just
took
whatever
was
on
the
on
the
cube
config
and
also
there
is
no
class,
no
cross
cluster
features.
So
no
no
global
search.
A
A
You
can
run
this
project
also
locally
as
an
application
for
your
you
know,
computer
or
also
in
the
cluster.
It
has
multiple
multi-cluster
support
and
one
of
its
core
features
is
that
we
have
what
we
call
front-end
plug-ins.
So
you
can
have
a
plug-in.
You
know.
Just
let's
say
we
don't
have
a
graph
view.
So
let's
say
that
you
want
to
create
a
graph
view.
A
A
Another
thing
is
that
the
so
all
the
cluster
actions
we
we
have
at
the
moment
like
editing,
for
example,
a
deployment
or
something
those
have
a
grace
period
when
you
click
apply.
So
if
you
are
editing
something-
and
you
click
apply-
you
you
suddenly
notice
that
you
made
a
mistake.
You
can
just
click
cancel,
so
it
gives
you
like
a
small
grace
period
for
you
to
kind
of
undo
or
cancel
what
you
were
about
to
do.
A
A
Yeah,
so
kinfolk
has
a
kubernetes
distribution
called
locomotive
and
at
first
of
course
we
wanted
something
that
we
could
use
as
a
ui
for
it.
So
we
looked
into
the
existing
projects
and-
and
the
idea
was
okay-
we
take
one
of
these
and
we
modify
it.
We
keep
a
fork
of
it
or
we
contribute
what
we
can
back,
but
at
the
point
at
that
point
we
realized
none
of
the
of
those
projects
actually
had
all
that
we
wanted.
A
So
we
decided
to
create
a
project
and
a
ui
project,
but
not
one
that
was
like
intimate
or
very
intimate
with
with
locomotive.
Instead,
we
wanted
to
create
basically
what
we
were
looking
for.
So
we
created
this
project
called
headlamp,
and
the
idea
is
that
for
locomotive
we
will
take
this
and
we
will,
you
know,
create
a
couple
of
plugins
that
will
be
more
intimate
with
this
project,
so
hopefully
other
people
can,
you
know,
use
it
as
well.
B
B
So
I
said
it's
kind
of
a
cube
ctl
for
the
web
and
really
for
support
and
incident
response,
so
something
you
would
deploy
as
a
platform
team
and
provide
this
to
your
users,
and
so
you
can
always
use
permalinks
to
linked
to
certain
ports
or
certain
views
or
certain
errors
or
logs,
and
this
just
works
across
multiple
clusters.
It
uses
plain
html
and
css.
It
also
is
responsive.
B
So
you
can
also
open
this
on
your
smartphone
if
you're
traveling-
and
it
also
has
multi-cluster
features,
so
you
can
search
for
workloads
across
many
clusters
and
it
provides
advanced
queries
and
filters.
So,
for
example,
you
can
quickly
look
for
all
nodes
with
a
certain
version
or
a
certain
taint
across
many
clusters,
so
the
whole
tool
is
customizable,
so
you
can
adapt
this
with
templating
and
themes,
and
so
on
for
your
like
company
needs
and
we
have
it
deployed
in
zalando,
so
I
use
it
pretty
frequently.
B
B
So
I
don't
really
want
humans
to
interact
with
kubernetes
directly
and
change,
something
at
least
definitely
not
on
production.
So
this
view
tool
was
really
made
for
having
a
read-only
view.
That
being
said,
it
might
make
sense
to
have
some
right
access
for
emergency
situations
in
the
future,
but
this
is
really
not
a
focus
or
priority.
So
right
now
not
really
planned.
Maybe
I'll
add
something.
If
I
see
this
is
really
valuable
for
myself
or
others.
A
Great
yeah,
and
next
we
we
have
a
a
quick
mention
to
about
this
project
called
canines.
So
this
is
a
honorable
mention
because
it
does
not
really
fit
the
the
criteria
of
having
a
graphical
user
interface.
But
when
hanning
announced
on
twitter
that
we
were
doing
this
talk,
many
people
came
and
said
that
you
have
to
check
a9s
so
yeah.
So
this
is
a
like.
A
I
said
this
is
a
common
line,
interface
tool
that
I
would
say
it's
it's
like
an
extension
to
to
cube
ctl.
If
you
want,
because
it
gives
you
like
a
quick
ui
with
a
listing
all
the
all
the
resources
you
have,
you
can
change
them.
You
can,
you
know
describe
them,
you
can
get
a
shell
into
them,
but
this
is
not
a
project
that
you
have
to
either.
A
B
A
So
I
think
you
know
day-to-day
I
would
use,
I
would
use
you
know
a
graphical
tool,
so
one
that
kind
of
guides
me
a
bit
better
or
a
bit
more
graphically
into
what
I
need
to
to
do.
But
that
said,
you
know
canines
seems
like
a
very
nice
tool
to
just.
If
you
want
to
quickly
check
something
or
something
is
going
wrong,
you
can
just
quickly
run
it
and
see.
What's
up
but
yeah
for
day
to
day,
I
would
go
with
with
the
full
graphical
solution.
B
Okay,
let's
have
a
quick
look
at
other
uis,
so
we
have
some
uis,
which
were
also
mentioned
to
us,
but
they
require
a
control
plane
or
something
else
installed.
So
the
rancher
dashboard
ui
actually
looks
pretty
nice,
but
it's
not
available
standalone
right
now.
Gardener
is
mostly
for
managing
clusters.
Link
id
and
istio
kiali
are
service
meshes,
so
you
need
them
installed.
Reefscope
is
also
pretty
nice
and
but
requires
a
probe.
App
and
portena
is
not
really
a
generic
when
it
is
ui,
but
now
has
gun.
It
is
support
and
requires
some
persistency.
B
Yeah,
there
are
also
some
other
projects
which
I
mentioned,
for
example,
in
my
blog
post
last
year,
but
some
of
them
are
now
stale.
So
constantly
is
a
stale
cubeman.
I
want
to
mention
briefly
because
it
has
a
very
nice
approach
with
recipes,
so
we
can
define
recipes
for
views
and
queries
across
clusters,
but
sadly,
now
also
stale
kubrick's,
stale
cubanata
we
looked
into,
but
the
latest
release
is
one
year
old
and
on
docker,
hub
and
kubernetes
is
was
out
because
it's
not
open
source.
B
A
One
thing
that
I
think
it's
curious
that
I
noticed
is
that
many
of
the
of
the
projects
I
tested
just
assume
that
you
have
like
full
administration
capabilities
or
or
a
full
admin
role
in
the
in
the
cluster.
So,
whereas
you
know
maybe
you
have
a
company
that
is,
you
know,
has
to
really
review
who
can
actually
edit
stuff
update,
stuff
and
delete
stuff.
So
she
was
curious
to
to
realize
that
and
yeah.
What
do
you
think
on
your
site.
B
Yeah,
I
found
it
interesting
that
the
the
two
landscape
changes
over
time,
so
we
now
have
some
stale
projects,
which
might
be
a
little
bit
sad,
but
it's
also
nice
to
see
new
projects
like
cubenav.
I
only
discovered,
as
part
of
the
preparations
for
this
talk,
so
it's
from
this
year
and
and
yeah.
Maybe
there
are
also
new
projects
in
the
future.
B
We
use
kubernetes
webview
because
it's
created
for
many
clusters
and
just
read
only
access
for
for
thousands
of
developers,
but
this
doesn't
necessarily
mean
that
it's
the
right
tool
for
for
your
scenario,
so
definitely
check
check
out
these
different
tools
and
yeah.
You
probably
have
your
list
of
requirements
and
needs
to
to
to
evaluate
the
tools
by.
A
Yeah-
and
I
hope
that
in
that
regard,
we
we
gave
a
simple,
but
you
know
but
useful
overview
of
different
tools.
Also,
you
know
check
out
the
ones
that
need
the
control
plane
if,
if,
if
that's
fine
with
your
deployment
too
and
and
yeah,
thank
you
very
much
for
for
attending
and
if
you
have
questions
we'll
run.
Thank
you
very
much.