A Select List of Kubernetes Tools

Just because you have a hammer, doesn’t mean every problem is a nail.

Some of these you’ve probably heard of. Some of them you probably haven’t.

What makes this list special is that they’ve all be useful to me, while developing and operating Kubernetes platforms and workloads.

Hopefully they’re useful to you too!

• kubectx + kubens — fast cluster & namespace switching
• kustomize — resource patching (built into kubectl now)
• krew — find and install kubectl plugins
• ketall — kubectl get all, but actually get everything
• kail — tail logs from multiple pods
• rbac-lookup — lookup which roles a user has
• kube-capacity — cluster resource requests, limits, and usage overview
• kube-score — static analysis of resource manifests
• kube-janitor — resource deletion after TTL
• kube-state-metrics — resource metrics
• cert-manager — TLS certificate provisioning
• external-dns — configure external DNS with resource annotations
• k-rail — policy enforcement and custom resource defaults using webhooks
• kubexit — sidecar dependencies for startup delays and graceful termination

Bonus! Here are a few tools I haven’t used yet, but look like they solve problems I definitely have experienced:

• kube-scan — workload risk assessment
• secrets-store-csi-driver —secure secrets injection via CSI volume
• kiosk — multitenancy account, namespace, and limit management

If you like, highlight the lines of the tools you use and Medium will show their popularity to other readers, or comment with your own favorite useful tools.