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Useful Interactive Terminal and Graphical UI Tools for Kubernetes

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I recently ran an internal hands-on workshop where I demonstrated to our field, marketing, support and engineering on just how easy it is to deploy and manage Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) Clusters running on VMware Cloud on AWS. While developing the lab which has been several weeks in the making, I did not want to assume everyone was familiar with Kubernetes (K8s) and as part of the workshop, I thought it would be useful to include some additional utilities that would provide a better lab experience for those that are just getting started in their K8s journey.

I included tools like bat, kube-ps1 and Octant as an example and the weekend before the workshop, I came to learn about a really neat terminal-based UI tool called kubelive and I knew I had to include that in the workshop. Interestingly, after the workshop, several folks shared with me that they had not heard of this tool either and others on Twitter had the same feedback. Given the level of interests with K8s in the VMware community, especially with the launch of vSphere with Kubernetes (Project Pacific), I thought it might be useful to share some of the terminal-based and graphical UI tools that I had been evaluating and learning about.

As of writing this blog post, my current two favorites is Octant for a graphical-based UI (browser) Headlamp Radar for a graphical based UI and K9s for a terminal-based UI.

Radar

In 2026, this is my current go to k8s-based visualization, which you can read more about HERE.

Headlamp

I noticed that many of the graphical tools listed below are no longer being developed as of Nov 2025. While doing a quick search to see what are the latest options in 2025, I came across Headlamp which looks to fit my need quite well. It is a desktop application that you can download and use for free and after importing your kubeconfig file, you can start interacting with the system. While I could have used K9s, I was looking for something more interactive and I found it be pretty easy to use after a few minutes and allowed me to quickly clean up some failed deployments with just a few clicks. Depending on your needs, you might still opt for a CLI-based tool like K9s or kubectl, but for those looking for something graphical, this might be one to consider.

Octant

Octant is a browser-based UI aimed at application developers giving them visibility into how their application is running. I also think this tool can really benefit anyone using K8s, especially if you forget the various options to kubectl to inspect your K8s Cluster and/or workloads. Octant is also a VMware Open Source project and it is supported on Windows, Mac and Linux (including ARM) and runs locally on a system that has access to a K8S Cluster. After installing Octant, just type octant and it will start listening on localhost:7777 and you just launch your web browser to access the UI.

One thing I really like about Octant is how easy it is to switch context between different K8s Cluster with a simple drop down along with namespace filtering which is quite helpful in narrowing down a specific deployments, usually for informational or troubleshooting purposes.


Most of my workflows generally involves a specific K8s pod and the Resource View tab is super handy to give me a quick overview of the different resources that is associated whether that is a deployment, secret, service, etc.


The YAML tab beats using cat and bat, especially for really large and complex deployments and you can search right in the browser.
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Sneak peek at deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Grid on vSphere & VMware Cloud on AWS

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Last week, VMware had its huge launch which included VMware Cloud Foundation 4, vSphere 7, vSAN 7 and the brand new VMware Tanzu Portfolio that will help organizations build, run and manage modern applications for their business. Although we still have a couple of more months before general availability, the level of excitement for these upcoming releases was pretty amazing to see on social media, especially for the highly anticipated Kubernetes with vSphere capability, formally known as Project Pacific.

UPDATE (04/10/20) - TKG 1.0 has officially GA'ed, you can now deploy TKG Clusters using the new TKG CLI/UI as demonstrated in this blog post.

When vSphere 7 is available, Kubernetes with vSphere is just one way in which customers will be able to deploy upstream and conformant Open Source Kubernetes also referred to as Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG). For customers that require a solution today or for those that may not able to upgrade to vSphere 7 immediately, VMware has another option called Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Plus for vSphere and VMware Cloud on AWS which was also announced last week but albeit not many folks took notice.


There are few things worth mentioning about Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Plus:

  1. Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Plus is a new offering that is comprised of the core TKG software and it includes support from VMware's Customer Reliability Engineering (CRE), which is a team made up of Kubernetes Architects that can help customers design and architect their Cloud Native Applications running on the VMware Tanzu Platform
  2. For customers that do not require CRE support and just want standard VMware GSS Support, then you can simply use Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) which includes VMware Support and Subscription (SnS)
  3. The core TKG software which Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Plus includes can deploy Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster (upstream K8s running in VMs). Customers can already do this right now by using Cluster API (CAPI) and specifically the Cluster API Provider for vSphere (CAPV) which provides lifecycle management of Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster running on any valid vSphere endpoint including VMware Cloud on AWS. The latest CAPV v1alpha3 release also introduces a new workflow that reduces the number of steps compared to v1alpha2 which is now deprecated

For customers that want to further customize how Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster are deployed and configured including tools that they are already using, CAPV will be the most flexible option. Having gone through the CAPV workflows myself, I think it can still be daunting if you are new to this space, not to mention the different CLI tools that you will have to learn to have a successful deployment. Luckily, the VMware TKG team has also been thinking about the overall user experience and how they can build on top of CAPV to provide a much more simpler and more intuitive interface for customers that is just looking for a turnkey option.

Here is a sneak peek (Technical Preview) of the upcoming Tanzu Kubernetes Grid CLI or TKG CLI for short which will make deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster on ANY vSphere endpoint incredibly EASY!

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How to fix "extensions/v1beta1" & missing required field "selector" for Yelb Kubernetes application? 

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As you can see from my recent tweets, I have been spending some time with Kubernetes Cluster API (CAPI) and specifically Cluster API Provider vSphere (CAPV) and deploying upstream Kubernetes (K8s) running on VMware Cloud on AWS 🙂

After successfully deploying my first K8S Workload Cluster, I knew the first k8s application that I had to deploy on my shiny new K8s Cluster was Massimo Re Ferre' and Andrea Siviero famous "Yelb" application which I had demonstrated several years ago running on VMware PKS. In fact, I had even deployed it recently (late last year) in one of my Project Pacific cluster without any issue, so I was surprised when I ran into some challenges as you can see from the title of the blog post.

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