5 ms·

K9s – Manage Your Kubernetes Clusters in Style

154 points by sharjeelsayed 6y ago

vs4vijay 6y ago
I was creating similar TUI tool with Mouse support as well. LazyKubectl: https://github.com/vs4vijay/lazykubectl https://github.com/vs4vijay/lazykubectl (WIP)
DevKoala 6y ago
I love this tool. I have one terminal window always open with it.
- jonathanoliver 6y ago
  I just downloaded it and I'm trying it out. It's sooo convenient. I know most of the commands from memory, but it's really nice to be able to run them with only a few, simple keystrokes, e.g. getting logs for a given pod or doing port forwarding, etc.
outime 6y ago
An alternative to this is Octant, a full-blown GUI (not terminal) which looks pretty good and it's backef by VMWare https://octant.dev/ https://octant.dev/
- mccabe 6y ago
  I'd tried Octant but found it rather slow for general use and went back to kubectl. With k9s however I use it extensively as it's so much quicker to get stuff done. I do have it aliased to k9s --readonly by default to protect me from myself.
- dewey 6y ago
  There's also https://infra.app https://infra.app which is really nice for a quick peek into the cluster.
- AlphaSite 6y ago
  I really like octant and it’s been great seeing it get nicer each release. I’ve found is super helpful figuring out why things aren’t working in pod, the visibility to effort ratio feels better to me than kubectl. Disclaimer I work at vmware (but on a different team)
sigmonsays 6y ago
i'm going to take this for a spin. I dont really spend a ton of time looking at k8s, but I feel this is far superior to octant. I'm more of a cli junky though.
bproven 6y ago
k9s is nice, but another option is Lens: https://k8slens.dev/ https://k8slens.dev/
azangru 6y ago
That name though is not in style. I understand that they are trying to pun on k8s and k9, but the 8 in k8s is there for a reason. k9s is confusingly pretending to hide 9 characters in the middle when it is not.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- johnmarcus 6y ago
  I think their mascot is a dog, as in "canine"
  - azangru 6y ago
    Yes, but I strongly suspect that the mascot is secondary to the name. They probably started with k8s, saw an opportunity to pun, added 1 to get k9, and that informed the logo.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - hawaiianbrah 6y ago
      And... if it did?
mac-chaffee 6y ago
One of my favorite features is pure speed, while still having a lot of functionality. If a production bug happens and I need to quickly debug, not much is faster than: - "k9s" (start the CLI) - "/myservice" (search for the pod) - "l" (open the logs) - "/Exception" (search the logs) Maybe the bug was a bad config file I need to manually edit: - "<escape>" (close the log view) - "s" (exec into the container) K9s has almost completely replaced "kubectl" for me as well. And the dev team behind k9s is great too. We get a new patch about every week and a new feature every 2 weeks or so on average: https://github.com/derailed/k9s/releases https://github.com/derailed/k9s/releases
- throwanem 6y ago
  This might be faster: kubectl logs deployment/<whatever> | less kubectl exec -it deployment/whatever sh
  - neurostimulant 6y ago
    The benefit of using tools like k9s and rancher is making it easy to explore your cluster. If you have hundreds of pods and services, using a gui tools to explore and manage your cluster is much easier than using kubectl.
    - throwanem 6y ago
      I've found just the opposite, in clusters with usually about a hundred or so deployments per namespace and concomitant scale in pods, services, etc. GUI tools proved occasionally useful early on as I familiarized myself with k8s concepts and the system architecture at hand. Once I developed that basic level of familiarity, the 30,000' view largely ceased to be useful.
      - neurostimulant 6y ago
        Yup, it's useful for exploration, but once you have a good mental model of the cluster's contents, the gui probably won't be as useful anymore, though personally I like to open the gui dashboard to watch live logs and graphana graph (it somehow calming to me).
emersonrsantos 6y ago
One of the tools that I use daily (only use kubectl to apply and delete resources), and one of my favorite UX in all software: Terminal-based GUI with keystrokes for everything. It's like Norton/Midnight commander for Kubernetes. And i love the K9 references!
throwanem 6y ago
I feel like this is one of those things like the Git CLI, where, yeah it's gross, but you're better off learning it without a porcelain at first because it's sufficiently complex that doing it the other way around will leave you initially bewildered when you need to venture beyond what the porcelain can help you with.
samgranieri 6y ago
This is my favorite tool for jumping between kubernetes contexts/clusters and namespaces. I've used it daily for over a year and it's awesome
beilabs 6y ago
I've been using this a lot the past year. It's consistently been improving along with each version. My main love for this tool is you can see the cluster health on the screen, can see evicted pods and running / scheduled cronjobs and easily jump into the shell of any running pod. This tool is always on one of my screens, definitely a job well done.

154 points by sharjeelsayed 6y ago

I was creating similar TUI tool with Mouse support as well. LazyKubectl: https://github.com/vs4vijay/lazykubectl https://github.com/vs4vijay/lazykubectl (WIP)

DevKoala 6y ago

I love this tool. I have one terminal window always open with it.

jonathanoliver 6y ago
I just downloaded it and I'm trying it out. It's sooo convenient. I know most of the commands from memory, but it's really nice to be able to run them with only a few, simple keystrokes, e.g. getting logs for a given pod or doing port forwarding, etc.

outime 6y ago

An alternative to this is Octant, a full-blown GUI (not terminal) which looks pretty good and it's backef by VMWare https://octant.dev/ https://octant.dev/

mccabe 6y ago
I'd tried Octant but found it rather slow for general use and went back to kubectl. With k9s however I use it extensively as it's so much quicker to get stuff done. I do have it aliased to k9s --readonly by default to protect me from myself.
dewey 6y ago
There's also https://infra.app https://infra.app which is really nice for a quick peek into the cluster.
AlphaSite 6y ago
I really like octant and it’s been great seeing it get nicer each release. I’ve found is super helpful figuring out why things aren’t working in pod, the visibility to effort ratio feels better to me than kubectl. Disclaimer I work at vmware (but on a different team)

sigmonsays 6y ago

i'm going to take this for a spin. I dont really spend a ton of time looking at k8s, but I feel this is far superior to octant. I'm more of a cli junky though.

bproven 6y ago

k9s is nice, but another option is Lens: https://k8slens.dev/ https://k8slens.dev/

azangru 6y ago

That name though is not in style. I understand that they are trying to pun on k8s and k9, but the 8 in k8s is there for a reason. k9s is confusingly pretending to hide 9 characters in the middle when it is not.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
johnmarcus 6y ago
I think their mascot is a dog, as in "canine"
- azangru 6y ago
  Yes, but I strongly suspect that the mascot is secondary to the name. They probably started with k8s, saw an opportunity to pun, added 1 to get k9, and that informed the logo.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - hawaiianbrah 6y ago
    And... if it did?

mac-chaffee 6y ago

One of my favorite features is pure speed, while still having a lot of functionality. If a production bug happens and I need to quickly debug, not much is faster than: - "k9s" (start the CLI) - "/myservice" (search for the pod) - "l" (open the logs) - "/Exception" (search the logs) Maybe the bug was a bad config file I need to manually edit: - "<escape>" (close the log view) - "s" (exec into the container) K9s has almost completely replaced "kubectl" for me as well. And the dev team behind k9s is great too. We get a new patch about every week and a new feature every 2 weeks or so on average: https://github.com/derailed/k9s/releases https://github.com/derailed/k9s/releases

throwanem 6y ago
This might be faster: kubectl logs deployment/<whatever> | less kubectl exec -it deployment/whatever sh
- neurostimulant 6y ago
  The benefit of using tools like k9s and rancher is making it easy to explore your cluster. If you have hundreds of pods and services, using a gui tools to explore and manage your cluster is much easier than using kubectl.
  - throwanem 6y ago
    I've found just the opposite, in clusters with usually about a hundred or so deployments per namespace and concomitant scale in pods, services, etc. GUI tools proved occasionally useful early on as I familiarized myself with k8s concepts and the system architecture at hand. Once I developed that basic level of familiarity, the 30,000' view largely ceased to be useful.
    - neurostimulant 6y ago
      Yup, it's useful for exploration, but once you have a good mental model of the cluster's contents, the gui probably won't be as useful anymore, though personally I like to open the gui dashboard to watch live logs and graphana graph (it somehow calming to me).

emersonrsantos 6y ago

One of the tools that I use daily (only use kubectl to apply and delete resources), and one of my favorite UX in all software: Terminal-based GUI with keystrokes for everything. It's like Norton/Midnight commander for Kubernetes. And i love the K9 references!

throwanem 6y ago

I feel like this is one of those things like the Git CLI, where, yeah it's gross, but you're better off learning it without a porcelain at first because it's sufficiently complex that doing it the other way around will leave you initially bewildered when you need to venture beyond what the porcelain can help you with.

samgranieri 6y ago

This is my favorite tool for jumping between kubernetes contexts/clusters and namespaces. I've used it daily for over a year and it's awesome

beilabs 6y ago

I've been using this a lot the past year. It's consistently been improving along with each version. My main love for this tool is you can see the cluster health on the screen, can see evicted pods and running / scheduled cronjobs and easily jump into the shell of any running pod. This tool is always on one of my screens, definitely a job well done.