K9s Tool Alternative for Managing Kubernetes

When managing Kubernetes, having the right tool for the job is key and there are many great tools out there. One tool that many use for managing Kubernetes from the command line is K9s. However, if you are looking for a K9s tool alternative, let’s look at some possible options for managing your Kubernetes cluster.

What is K9s?

The K9s tool is a command line based UI that allows you to manage your Kubernetes clusters. While it operates from the command line, it gives you a GUI-like experience to manage your K8s clusters. It shows you changes and information in real-time as you are using the tool.

It is a great tool that I really like managing things from the command line with a quick interface and ease of hopping around looking at different aspects of your cluster.

K9s is easy to get up and running in Ubuntu with the following:

## Download
wget https://github.com/derailed/k9s/releases/download/v0.32.7/k9s_linux_amd64.deb

## Install k9s
dpkg -i k9s_linux_amd64.deb

You can learn more about and download K9s from here:

• K9s download and install

K9s tool alternative

There are a few K9s tool alternative solutions that I would recommend if you are looking for something different and that gives you a GUI while still giving you the ability to have command line access to your environment.

1. Aptakube
2. Lens
3. Headlamp
4. OpenLens
5. kubectl with other plugins

1. Aptakube

Aptakube is a tool that is a great alternative for managing your Kubernetes cluster. It is super fast and has all the tools you would expect from a fully-featured management tool. One of the giant feathers in its hat is the ability to manage multiple Kubernetes clusters at the same time which is a feature you won’t find in most other tools.

The only downside to the tool is it is pay only. There is no free version or limited feature version. You can get a 14-day free trial when you download and the licensing is actually very reasonable.

You can learn more about and download Aptakube from here:

• Aptakube · Kubernetes GUI | macOS, Windows, Linux

2. Lens

Lens is a tool that has been around for some time now and continues to get better and more fully featured. It springs from the open-source project OpenLens. It is a pay for tool, but, they have a version that is completely free and has most if not all the features that most will look for in their Kubernetes environments.

Akin to K9s, I like the strong terminal features built-in with the tool that allows you to terminal into pods, or even the Kubernetes node if you need to without issue. So, you can basically do all your managment from one place, right from the tool itself.

You can manage basically all aspects of Kubernetes from the tool, including pods, deployments, daemon sets, stateful sets, replica sets, replication controllers, jobs, cron jobs, and helm charts just to name a few.

You can learn more about and download Lens here:

• Lens | The Kubernetes IDE

3. Headlamp

Headlamp is a great tool that you may not have heard about. It has most of the features of the other tools, is really lightweight and fast and can manage your clusters as you would expect. I first learned about the project a couple of years ago and recently revisited it and it has come a long way.

You have a quick view of all your Kubernetes workloads, including pods, deployments, stateful sets, daemon sets, replica sets, jobs, cronjobs, storage, security, etc. It also has a really neat deployment option called in-cluster deployment. With this option, you can install headlamp inside your cluster and access it from a web interface! Pretty cool. None of the other tools have this as an option, aside from kubectl as part of Kubernetes.

You can learn more about and download Headlamp here:

• Headlamp

4. Open Lens

Open Lens is a project that you can still download. However, it is a project that is no longer maintained. Mirantis closed the source code for the Lens project moving forward so there will likely be no more updates to the project.

However, if you are looking for a free and open source version of the Lens tool, you can still get it from the GitHub page here:

• lensapp/lens: Lens – The way the world runs Kubernetes

5. Kubectl with plugins

If you have worked with kubernetes at all, you know the kubectl command. It is the de facto command-line tool used to work with Kubernetes and manage your clusters, configure resources, and do troubleshooting. However, you may not know there are many complementary plugins that you can download and install that make kubectl even better. Here are three that you should check out:

1. kubectx

• Description: Switch between Kubernetes contexts easily
• Usage: kubectx my-cluster
• GitHub: kubectx

2. kubens

• Description: Quickly switch between namespaces.
• Usage: kubens default
• GitHub: kubens

3. kubectl-aliases

• Description: Provides a set of predefined shell aliases for common kubectl commands.
• Example: k get po -n kube-system # Alias for kubectl get pods -n kube-system
• GitHub: kubectl-aliases

Wrapping up

There are many great Kubernetes management tools out there that just make life much easier when it comes to managing and maintaining your Kubernetes clusters. Having a good tool for managment just makes things easier to see, to perform, and troubleshooting much easier as well. Let me know if there are other tools you like to use in your environment with managing your Kubernetes clusters and what those might be.