Wondering how to install Kubernetes Dashboard with NodePort? We can help you.

As part of our Google Cloud Platform Services, we assist our customers with several Kubernetes queries.

Today, let us see how our Support Techs perform the installation for our customers.

Install Kubernetes Dashboard with NodePort

A web-based user interface, Kubernetes provides information on the state of the Kubernetes cluster resources and any errors that may occur.

Moving ahead, let us see the steps our Support Techs employ for a smooth installation.

Step 1: Configure kubectl

To deploy the dashboard to the Kubernetes cluster, we use the kubectl Kubernetes management tool.

Step 2: Deploy Kubernetes Dashboard

By default, the dashboard deployment contains a minimal set of RBAC privileges it needs to run.

To deploy the Kubernetes dashboard, we run:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/dashboard/master/aio/deploy/recommended.yaml

After that, we need to set Service to use NodePort.

To modify the file, we have to download it to the local machine:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/dashboard/master/aio/deploy/recommended.yaml-O kubernetes-dashboard-deployment.yml

Now, we can modify the file to fit the deployment needs.

vim kubernetes-dashboard-deployment.yml

For example, here we modify the Kubernetes dashboard service to be of NodePort type:

kind: Service
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
labels:
k8s-app: kubernetes-dashboard
name: kubernetes-dashboard
namespace: kubernetes-dashboard
spec:
ports:
- port: 443
targetPort: 8443
selector:
k8s-app: kubernetes-dashboard
type: NodePort

Later, to specify NodePort, we use:

kind: Service
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
labels:
k8s-app: kubernetes-dashboard
name: kubernetes-dashboard
namespace: kubernetes-dashboard
spec:
ports:
- port: 443
targetPort: 8443
nodePort: 32000
type: NodePort
selector:
k8s-app: kubernetes-dashboard

Once done, we need to apply the changes:

kubectl apply -f kubernetes-dashboard-deployment.yml

Then we go ahead and check the deployment status:

$ kubectl get deployments -n kubernetes-dashboard
NAME READY UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE
dashboard-metrics-scraper 1/1 1 1 86s
kubernetes-dashboard 1/1 1 1

It should create two pods, one for the dashboard and another for metrics.

$ kubectl get pods -n kubernetes-dashboard
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
dashboard-metrics-scraper-7b64584c5c-xvtqp 1/1 Running 0 2m4s
kubernetes-dashboard-566f567dc7-w59rn 1/1 Running 0 2m4s

Since we made the service type to NodePort, let’s confirm its creation:

$ kubectl get service -n kubernetes-dashboard
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
dashboard-metrics-scraper ClusterIP 10.103.159.77 <none> 8000/TCP 8m40s
kubernetes-dashboard NodePort 10.101.194.22 <none> 443:32000/TCP 8m40s

Step 3: Access Kubernetes Dashboard

Suppose, the Service deployment was assigned a port 32000/TCP.

# Example
https://xxx.xxx.xxx.xx:32000

Now, we need to confirm if access to the dashboard is working.

To do so, we need a token to access the dashboard.

Then we will see a web dashboard.

Nginx Ingress:

---
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
name: k8s-dashboard
namespace: kubernetes-dashboard
annotations:
nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/secure-backends: "true"
nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/ssl-passthrough: "true"
spec:
tls:
- hosts:
- k8sdash.mydomain.com
secretName: tls-secret
rules:
- host: k8sdash.mydomain.com
http:
paths:
- path: /
backend:
serviceName: kubernetes-dashboard
servicePort: 443

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Conclusion

In short, we saw how our Support Techs perform the installation of Kubernetes Dashboard with NodePort.