k8dash is the easiest way to manage your Kubernetes cluster. Why?
- Full cluster management: Namespaces, Nodes, Pods, Replica Sets, Deployments, Storage, RBAC and more
- Blazing fast and Always Live: no need to refresh pages to see the latest
- Quickly visualize cluster health at a glance: Real time charts help quickly track down poorly performing resources
- Easy CRUD and scaling: plus inline API docs to easily understand what each field does
- 100% responsive (runs on your phone/tablet)
- Simple OpenID integration: no special proxies required
- Simple installation: use the provided yaml resources to have k8dash up and running in under 1 minute (no, seriously)
- A running Kubernetes cluster (e.g., minikube)
- metrics server installed (optional, but strongly recommended)
- A Kubernetes cluster configured for OpenId Connect authentication (optional)
Back to Table of Contents
Deploy k8dash with something like the following...
NOTE: never trust a file downloaded from the internet. Make sure to review the contents of kubernetes-k8dash.yaml before running the script below.
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/indeedeng/k8dash/master/kubernetes-k8dash.yamlTo access k8dash, you must make it publicly visible. If you have an ingress server setup, you can accomplish by adding a route like the following
kind: Ingress
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
metadata:
name: k8dash
namespace: kube-system
spec:
rules:
-
host: k8dash.example.com
http:
paths:
-
path: /
backend:
serviceName: k8dash
servicePort: 80Back to Table of Contents
Unfortunately, kubectl proxy can not be used to access k8dash. According to the information at kubernetes/kubernetes#38775 (comment), it seems that kubectl proxy strips the Authorization header when it proxies requests. From that link:
this is working as expected. "proxying" through the apiserver will not get you standard proxy behavior (preserving Authorization headers end-to-end), because the API is not being used as a standard proxy
Back to Table of Contents
There are multiple options logging into the dashboard.
The first (and easiest) option is to create a dedicated service account. The can be accomplished using the following script.
# Create the service account in the current namespace (we assume default)
kubectl create serviceaccount k8dash-sa
# Give that service account root on the cluster
kubectl create clusterrolebinding k8dash-sa --clusterrole=cluster-admin --serviceaccount=default:k8dash-sa
# Find the secret that was created to hold the token for the SA
kubectl get secrets
# Show the contents of the secret to extract the token
kubectl describe secret k8dash-sa-token-xxxxx
Retrieve the token value from the secret and enter it into the login screen to access the dashboard.
back to Table of Contents
k8dash makes using OpenId Connect for authentication easy. Assuming your cluster is configured to use OIDC, all you need to do is create a secret containing your credentials and run the kubernetes-k8dash-oidc.yaml config.
To learn more about configuring a cluster for OIDC, check out these great links
- https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/authentication/
- https://medium.com/@mrbobbytables/kubernetes-day-2-operations-authn-authz-with-oidc-and-a-little-help-from-keycloak-de4ea1bdbbe
- https://medium.com/@int128/kubectl-with-openid-connect-43120b451672
- https://www.google.com/search?q=kubernetes+configure+oidc&oq=kubernetes+configure+oidc&aqs=chrome..69i57j0.4772j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
You can deploy k8dash with oidc support using something like the following script...
NOTE: never trust a file downloaded from the internet. Make sure to review the contents of kubernetes-k8dash-oidc.yaml before running the script below.
OIDC_URL=<put your endpoint url here... something like https://accounts.google.com>
OIDC_ID=<put your id here... something like blah-blah-blah.apps.googleusercontent.com>
OIDC_SECRET=<put your oidc secret here>
kubectl create secret -n kube-system generic k8dash \
--from-literal=url="$OIDC_URL" \
--from-literal=id="$OIDC_ID" \
--from-literal=secret="$OIDC_SECRET"
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/indeedeng/k8dash/master/kubernetes-k8dash-oidc.yaml
Additionally, there are a few other OIDC options you can provide via environment variables. First is OIDC_SCOPES. The default value for this value is openid email, but additional scopes can also be added using something like OIDC_SCOPES="openid email groups".
The other option is OIDC_METADATA. k8dash uses the excellent node-openid-client module. OIDC_METADATA will take a json string and pass it to the Client constructor. Docs here. For example, OIDC_METADATA='{"token_endpoint_auth_method":"client_secret_post"}
Back to Table of Contents
If you do not have an ingress server setup, you can utilize a NodePort service as configured in the kubernetes-k8dash-nodeport.yaml. This is ideal when creating a single node master, or if you want to get up and running as fast as possible.
This will map the k8dash port 4654 to a randomly selected port on the running node. The assigned port can be found using
$ kubectl get svc --namespace=kube-system
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
k8dash NodePort 10.107.107.62 <none> 4654:32565/TCP 1m
Back to Table of Contents
k8dash relies heavily on metrics-server to display real time cluster metrics. It is strongly recommended to have metrics-server installed to get the best experiance from k8dash.
Back to Table of Contents
- A running Kubernetes cluster.
Installing and running minikube is an easy way to get this.
Once minikube is installed, you can run it with the command
minikube start --driver=docker - Once the cluster is up and running, create some login credentials as described above
Back to Table of Contents
To run the server, run npm i from the /server directory to install dependencies and then npm start to run the server.
The server is a simple express.js server that is primarily responsible for proxying requests to the Kubernetes api server.
During development, the server will use whatever is configured in ~/.kube/config to connect the desired cluster. If you are using minikube, for example, you can run kubectl config set-context minikube to get ~/.kube/config set up correctly.
Back to Table of Contents
The client is a React application (using TypeScript) with minimal other dependencies.
To run the client, open a new terminal tab and navigate to the /client directory, run npm i and then npm start. This will open up a browser window to your local k8dash dashboard. If everything compiles correctly, it will load the site and then an error message will pop up Unhandled Rejection (Error): Api request error: Forbidden.... The error message has an 'X' in the top righthand corner to close that message. After you close it, you should see the UI where you can enter your token.
Back to Table of Contents
Back to Top