Kubernetes Dashboard

Kubernetes Dashboard is a general purpose, web-based UI for Kubernetes clusters. It allows to manage applications running in the cluster, troubleshoot them, as well as, manage the cluster itself.

Usage

The Dashboard is currently under active development and is not ready for production use (yet!).

Architecture Overview

Kubernetes Dashboard project consists of two main components. They are called here the frontend and the backend. The frontend is a single page web application that runs in a browser. It fetches all its business data from the backend using standard HTTP methods. The backend implements UI-business logic and fetches raw data from the various Kubernetes APIs.

Preparation

Make sure the following software is installed and added to the $PATH variable:

• Docker (1.3+)
• go (1.5+)
• godep (18+)
• nodejs (0.10.25+)
• npm (1.3+)
• etcd (2.2+)
• java (7+)
• gulp (3.9+)

Clone the repository and install the dependencies:

$ npm install

Run a Kubernetes Cluster

For development it is recommended to run a local Kubernetes cluster. For your convenience, a task is provided that checks out the latest stable version, compiles and runs the script: <kubernetes>/hack/local-up-cluster.sh. Open a separate tab in your terminal and run the following command:

$ gulp local-up-cluster

Depending on your environment you might need to run the gulp task with sudo. Also, you might need to propagate the $PATH settings to the root user.

$ sudo env "PATH=$PATH" gulp local-up-cluster

This will build and start a lightweight local cluster, consisting of a master and a single node. All processes run locally, without virtual machines. The local cluster should behave like a real cluster, however, plugins like heapster are not installed. Type Control-C to shut it down.

From time to time you might want to use to a real Kubernetes cluster (e.g. GCE, Vagrant) instead of the local one. The most convenient way is to create a proxy. Run the following command instead of the gulp task from above:

$ kubectl proxy --port=8080

kubectl will handle authentication with Kubernetes and create an API proxy with the address localhost:8080. Therefore, no changes in the configuration are required.

Serving Dashboard for Development

It is easy to compile and run Dashboard. Open a new tab in your terminal and type:

$ gulp serve

Open a browser and access the UI under localhost:9090. A lot of things happened underneath. Let's scratch on the surface a bit.

Compilation:

• Stylesheets are implemented with SASS and compiled to CSS with libsass
• JavaScript is implemented in ES6. It is compiled with Babel for development and the Google-Closure-Compiler for production.
• Go is used for the implementation of the backend. The source code gets compiled into the single binary 'dashboard'

Execution:

• Frontend is served by BrowserSync. It enables features like live reloading when HTML/CSS/JS change and even synchronize scrolls, clicks and form inputs across multiple devices.
• Backend is served by the 'dashboard' binary.

File watchers listen for source code changes (CSS, JS, GO) and automatically recompile. All changes are instantly reflected, e.g. by automatic process restarts or browser refreshes. The build artifacts are created in a hidden folder (.tmp).

After successful execution of gulp local-up-cluster and gulp serve, the following processes should be running (respective ports are given in parentheses):

BrowserSync (9090) ---> Dashboard backend (9091) ---> Kubernetes API server (8080)

Building Dashboard for Production

The Dashboard project can be built for production by using the following task:

$ gulp build

The code is compiled, compressed and debug support removed. The artifacts can be found in the dist folder.

In order to serve Dashboard from the dist folder, use the following task:

$ gulp serve:prod

Open a browser and access the UI under localhost:9090. The following processes should be running (respective ports are given in parentheses):

Dashboard backend (9090) ---> Kubernetes API server (8080)

In order to package everything into a ready-to-run Docker image, use the following task:

$ gulp docker-image

You might notice that the Docker image is very small and requires only a few MB. Only Dashboard assets are added to a scratch image. This is possible, because the dashboard binary has no external dependencies. Awesome!

Run the Tests

Unit tests should be executed after every source code change. The following task makes this a breeze by automatically executing the unit tests after every save action.

$ gulp test:watch

The full test suite includes static code analysis, unit tests and integration tests. It can be executed with:

$ gulp check

Contribute

Wish to contribute !! Great start here.

License

The work done has been licensed under Apache License 2.0. The license file can be found here. You can find out more about the license at:

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0