Technology · Ebook

Headlamp: An Extensible Kubernetes Web UI

by Shriira Press

Headlamp is a Kubernetes web interface, now an official Kubernetes sub-project under SIG UI, built around two ideas most dashboards treat as afterthoughts: that the UI should respect each user's real permissions, and that it should be extensible enough to become whatever a team needs. It runs the same React frontend whether you install it as a desktop app reading your local kubeconfig or deploy it in-cluster behind your identity provider, while a small Go backend proxies every request to the Kubernetes API so the cluster's own RBAC decides what each person sees. This free book covers what Headlamp is, its backend-and-frontend architecture, the desktop and in-cluster deployment modes, authentication and RBAC, navigating clusters and resources, the plugin system, and using it well in practice.

Contents

1. 1Preface
2. 2Chapter 1 — What Headlamp Is
3. 3Chapter 2 — Architecture
4. 4Chapter 3 — Deployment Modes
5. 5Chapter 4 — Authentication and RBAC
6. 6Chapter 5 — Navigating Clusters and Resources
7. 7Chapter 6 — The Plugin System
8. 8Chapter 7 — Headlamp in Practice