Install

To install and run k8dash on your Kubernetes cluster, follow these steps:

  1. Download kubernetes-k8dash.yaml

  2. Deploy k8dash by running the following command:

     kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/herbrandson/k8dash/master/kubernetes-k8dash.yaml

    To 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: 80

  3. Sign In

    1. Setting Up a Service Account Token

      The first (and easiest) option is to create a dedicated service account. This 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.

    2. You can also log in to k8dash with OIDC

  4. Optional: Use NodePort with k8dash

Installing Metrics Server

k8dash relies heavily on metrics-server to display real-time cluster metrics. It is strongly recommended that you install metrics-server for the best experience from k8dash.

Running OIDC on k8dash

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:

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/herbrandson/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"}

Running k8dash with NodePort

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