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K9S - A TUI interface to manage your cluster

After getting my hands on kubectl (the utility for managing a kubernetes cluster), I started to find its use slow, boring and unwieldy. Do a kubectl get pods -n monitoring here, a kubectl logs -n thebidouilleur docusaurus-x38jsu8 there. It takes 2 minutes, but we spend more time typing commands than analyzing the result. This is why I inquired about an interface allowing me to perform the same recurring tasks in a few actions.

And that's how I came across K9S.

K9S​

K9S is a utility that works exactly the same way as kubectl. It will send HTTPS requests to cluster masters and display the result.

Small demo from the official site

I already knew of the existence of Lens which I find cumbersome and complex to use and faced with that, K9S ticks all the boxes of my expectations.

K9S allows to:

  • View pod logs
  • Open a port to a pod
  • See in Yaml the manifest of a pod/deployment
  • Edit configmaps
  • Make coffee

k9s works with shortcuts similar to VIM. The binary weighs only a few megabytes. And no dependencies are required (apart from owning the kubeconfig).