CINQby Quinten Stekelenburg
Kubernetes is everywhere now and when you are using Kubernetes you may discover that you could make good use of a nice Kubernetes dashboard. This is where Lens from Kontena comes in, and what a nice application it is!
Lens is a desktop application that runs on MacOS, Linux or Windows and gives you a powerful set of tools all from within one dashboard. It is FREE of charge but you need to apply for an invitation. I received the invitation code within a few hours after I applied. After installation you also get 5 invites that you can hand out to friends/colleagues.
From within the beautiful UI you can manage multiple Kubernetes clusters and quickly switch between them. The UI gives you full control over your clusters with all the provided information, metrics and tools.
Debugging and editing is made easy within the dashboard, it can read all the information and metrics. You can see the logs or gain an interactive shell into the pod.
Editing deployments, for example, is a breeze: just edit it in the dashboard and click save or use the included terminal with kubectl.
With the metrics enabled you can view the metrics from all the resources and see how they perform. For example you can drill down from deployment -> pod -> container and see the relevant metrics on each separate level.
Installing the application is super easy, just download the Lens installer and run it. The application reads your .kube/config so there is no need to configure access to your clusters. If needed, you can also add clusters by hand from the UI.
I am really enthusiastic about this application, and I think it’s a real gem – so I urge you to download it and give it a try!!