Contents

My personal top 5 Must-Have Kubernetes Tools: k9s, kubectx, kubens, kube-ps1, popeye

My favourite kubernetes tools I use every day:

k9s:

K9s is a terminal based UI to interact with your Kubernetes clusters. The aim of this project is to make it easier to navigate, observe and manage your deployed applications in the wild. K9s continually watches Kubernetes for changes and offers subsequent commands to interact with your observed resources.

/assets/k9s/k9.png

K9s is available on Linux, macOS and Windows platforms.

  • MacOs
1
2
3
4
 # Via Homebrew
 brew install derailed/k9s/k9s
 # Via MacPort
 sudo port install k9s
  • Linux
1
2
3
4
 # Via LinuxBrew
 brew install derailed/k9s/k9s
 # Via PacMan
 pacman -S k9s
  • Windows
1
2
3
4
# Via scoop
scoop install k9s
# Via chocolatey
choco install k9s
  • Via a GO install
1
2
# NOTE: The dev version will be in effect!
go install github.com/derailed/k9s@latest
  • Binaries for Linux, Windows and Mac are available as tarballs in the release page.

kubectx + kubens:

kubectx is a tool to switch between contexts (clusters) on kubectl faster. kubens is a tool to switch between Kubernetes namespaces (and configure them for kubectl) easily.

/assets/kubens/kubectx-demo.gif /assets/kubens/kubens-demo.gif

Installation Binaries (link)

Project page (link)

kube-ps1:

Kubernetes prompt for bash and zsh that lets you add the current Kubernetes context and namespace configured on kubectl to your Bash/Zsh prompt strings

Check out the Project page (link)

Popeye - A Kubernetes Cluster Sanitizer:

Popeye is a utility that scans live Kubernetes cluster and reports potential issues with deployed resources and configurations. It sanitizes your cluster based on what’s deployed and not what’s sitting on disk. By scanning your cluster, it detects misconfigurations and helps you to ensure that best practices are in place, thus preventing future headaches. It aims at reducing the cognitive overload one faces when operating a Kubernetes cluster in the wild. Furthermore, if your cluster employs a metric-server, it reports potential resources over/under allocations and attempts to warn you should your cluster run out of capacity.

Project page (link)