KubeView

Kubernetes cluster visualiser and visual explorer

KubeView displays what is happening inside a Kubernetes cluster (or single namespace), it maps out the API objects and how they are interconnected. Data is fetched real-time from the Kubernetes API. The status of some objects (Pods, ReplicaSets, Deployments) is colour coded red/green to represent their status and health

The app auto refreshes and dynamically updates the view as new data comes in or when it changes.

Currently displays the following Kubernetes objects:

• Deployments
• ReplicaSets / StatefulSets / DaemonSets
• Pods
• Services
• Ingresses
• LoadBalancer IPs
• PersistentVolumeClaims
• Secrets
• ConfigMaps

Status

Note. No secrets are exposed by the Kubeview API, values are redacted and replaced with __VALUE REDACTED__ before being sent.

Demo & Screenshots

Short video demo

Screenshots

Application Components

The app consists of two separate but connected elements, in the standard pattern of backend REST API and JS client frontend

• Client SPA - Vue.js single page app. All visualisation, mapping & object connection logic is done client side
• API Server - Scrapes Kubernetes API and presents it back out as a custom REST API. Also acts as HTTP serving host to the SPA. Written in Go

Repo Details

This projects follows the ‘Standard Go Project Layout’ directory structure and naming conventions as described here

• /cmd/server - Source of the API server, written in Go. See the readme there for more details
• /web/client - Source of the client app, written in Vue.js. See the readme in there for more details
• /deployments/helm - Helm chart for simplifying deployment. See the readme in there for more details
• /build - Build artifacts such as the Dockerfile

Docker Image

Builds of the Docker image are hosted publicly on GitHub Container Registry here: https://github.com/users/benc-uk/packages/container/package/kubeview

• The latest tag is likely to be unstable
• Versioned tags are build and pushed in sync with released versions of this repo, e.g. docker pull ghcr.io/benc-uk/kubeview:0.1.17

Helm Chart

Helm chart called ‘kubeview’ is provided in the charts directory to help deploy and install KubeView into your cluster. The chart is also available in packaged form, in the releases section

Use the supplied sample example-values.yaml file (copy it to a new name, e.g. myvalues.yaml) to configure how to deploy KubeView. The main choice is if you want to expose the service via an ingress ingress.enabled: true or a load-balancer service ingress.enabled: false

When using an Ingress additionally configure the DNS hostname and TLS certs if you want to use HTTPS

Cluster or Namespaced Deployment

the chart supports deployment in a single namespace, set limitNamespace: true. In this mode, KubeView will be limited to displaying only the namespace it is deployed into (via the helm --namespace flag), and the namespace picker will not be shown in the UI. The ServiceAccount/Role/Binding will be scoped to this namespace too, rather than cluster wide.

This is passed to the server via the NAMESPACE_SCOPE env variable

Usage

Deploy with the standard Helm install command:

cd charts
helm install kubeview ./kubeview -f myvalues.yaml

Project Meta

Known Issues

• Filtering only applies to certain objects such as pods and controllers
• On Firefox, the namespace picker doesn’t show a drop down list, you have to start typing a name for the list to appear. This is Firefox behavior not a bug

Todo / Roadmap

• Support some CRDs
• Display Nodes
• Filtering improvements (no refresh)
• Settings with detail levels

Change Log

See releases