The Evolution of Kubernetes Dashboard
Authors: Marcin Maciaszczyk, Kubermatic & Sebastian Florek, Kubermatic
In October 2020, the Kubernetes Dashboard officially turned five. As main project maintainers, we can barely believe that so much time has passed since our very first commits to the project. However, looking back with a bit of nostalgia, we realize that quite a lot has happened since then. Now it’s due time to celebrate “our baby” with a short recap.
How It All Began
The initial idea behind the Kubernetes Dashboard project was to provide a web interface for Kubernetes. We wanted to reflect the kubectl functionality through an intuitive web UI. The main benefit from using the UI is to be able to quickly see things that do not work as expected (monitoring and troubleshooting). Also, the Kubernetes Dashboard is a great starting point for users that are new to the Kubernetes ecosystem.
The very
The First Version of the User Interface Prototype of the New User Interface The Current User Interface As you can see, the initial look and feel of the project were completely different from the current one. We have changed the design multiple times. The same has happened with the code itself. At
The migration came with many benefits like being able to refactor a lot of the code, introduce design patterns, reduce code complexity, and benefit from the new modules. However, you can imagine that the scale of the migration was huge. Luckily, there were a number of contributions from the community helping us with the resource support, new Kubernetes version support, i18n, and much more. After many long days and nights, we finally released the
Due to limited resources, unfortunately, we were not able to offer extensive support for many different Kubernetes versions. So, we’ve decided to always try and support the latest Kubernetes version available at the time of the Kubernetes Dashboard release. The latest release,
On top of that, we put in a great deal of effort into
Luckily, we do have regular contributors with domain knowledge who are taking care of the project, updating the Helm charts, translations, Go modules, and more. But as always, there could be many more hands on deck. So if you are thinking about contributing to Kubernetes, keep us in mind ;) The Kubernetes Dashboard has been growing and prospering for more than 5 years now. It provides the community with an intuitive Web UI, thereby decreasing the complexity of Kubernetes and increasing its accessibility to new community members. We are proud of what the project has achieved so far, but this is by far not the end. These are our priorities for the future: As mentioned earlier, we are currently looking for more people to help us further develop and grow the project. We are open to contributions in multiple areas, i.e., issues with help wanted label. Please feel free to reach out via GitHub or the #sig-ui channel in the .
Growing Up - The Big Migration
Where Are We Standing in 2021?
What’s Next
The Kubernetes Dashboard in Numbers
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