How to Install Kubenetes Dashboard

Dashboard is a web-based Kubernetes user interface. You can use Dashboard to deploy containerized applications to a Kubernetes cluster, troubleshoot your containerized application, and manage the cluster resources. You can use Dashboard to get an overview of applications running on your cluster, as well as for creating or modifying individual Kubernetes resources (such as Deployments, Jobs, DaemonSets, etc). For example, you can scale a Deployment, initiate a rolling update, restart a pod or deploy new applications using a deploy wizard.

Dashboard also provides information on the state of Kubernetes resources in your cluster and on any errors that may have occurred.

Kubernetes Dashboard with kops

We'll add dashboard add-on for kops. We'll be using the official yaml configuration which already works with basic user-authentication.

1. First run the yaml configuration of kops dashboard add-on:

kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/kops/master/addons/kubernetes-dashboard/v1.8.3.yaml

root:/manasmonitoring$ kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/kops/master/addons/kubernetes-dashboard/v1.8.3.yaml
secret/kubernetes-dashboard-certs created
serviceaccount/kubernetes-dashboard created
role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/kubernetes-dashboard-minimal created
rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/kubernetes-dashboard-minimal created
deployment.apps/kubernetes-dashboard created
service/kubernetes-dashboard created

2. Go to URL that got created:To get the URL:

kubectl cluster-info | grep master

root:/manasmonitoring$ kubectl cluster-info | grep master
Kubernetes master is running at https://kubernetes.example.com
root:/manasmonitoring$

3. We will create a service account with access to default namespace and do a clusterrolebinding.

#To create a service account with access to default namespace

kubectl create serviceaccount dashboard -n default

#To create a cluster role bind. Connecting service account and cluster level access

kubectl create clusterrolebinding dashboard-admin -n default \
--clusterrole=cluster-admin \
--serviceaccount=default:dashboard

4. To get the login token that you will be asked on the URL:

kubectl get secret $(kubectl get serviceaccount dashboard -o jsonpath="{.secrets[0].name}") -o jsonpath="{.data.token}" | base64 --decode

5. Default login credentials you can get by using following kops command in terminal:

Username: admin
Password: (using command)kops get secrets kube --type secret -oplaintext

Kubernetes Dashboard URL Will be :

https://kubernetes.example.com/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/https:kubernetes-dashboard:/proxy/#!/overview?namespace=default

The Kubeadm Way:

Deploying the Dashboard UI

The Dashboard UI is not deployed by default. To deploy it, run the following command:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/dashboard/v2.0.0-beta8/aio/deploy/recommended.yaml

Accessing the Dashboard UI

To protect your cluster data, Dashboard deploys with a minimal RBAC configuration by default. Currently, Dashboard only supports logging in with a Bearer Token. To create a token follow this procedure:

Create Service Account

We are creating Service Account with name admin-user in namespace kubernetes-dashboard first.

apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
name: admin-user
namespace: kubernetes-dashboard

Create ClusterRoleBinding

In most cases after provisioning our cluster using kops or kubeadm or any other popular tool, the ClusterRole cluster-admin already exists in the cluster. We can use it and create only ClusterRoleBinding for our ServiceAccount.

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
name: admin-user
roleRef:
apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
kind: ClusterRole
name: cluster-admin
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
name: admin-user
namespace: kubernetes-dashboard

Bearer Token

Now we need to find token we can use to log in. Execute following command:

kubectl -n kubernetes-dashboard describe secret $(kubectl -n kubernetes-dashboard get secret | grep admin-user | awk '{print $1}')

Now copy the token and paste it into Enter token field on login screen.

Click Sign in button and that's it. You are now logged in as an admin.

How to access Dashboard:

You can access Dashboard using the kubectl command-line tool by running the following command:

kubectl proxy

Kubectl will make Dashboard available at

http://localhost:8001/api/v1/namespaces/kubernetes-dashboard/services/https:kubernetes-dashboard:/proxy/

How to Install Kubenetes Dashboard