Many of you have reached out, expressing interest in a comparison between K8Studio and Lens. Now that K8Studio has evolved into a more mature project, I believe it’s the perfect moment to delve into a thorough analysis, highlighting the advancements within K8Studio in contrast to what Lens has to offer.
BTW this new version can be downloaded at K8studio or on our GitHub Page.If you like what we are building give us a star on Github
Deployment View One of the first striking features upon opening a cluster for the first time in K8Studio is the visual representation of the cluster, known as the Deployment View. Drawing from our extensive background in data visualization projects, we identified a gap in this application space: the absence of a comprehensive, interactive view of clusters that seamlessly handles large clusters while remaining highly interactive.
The Deployment View introduces an interactive portrayal of the cluster, allowing users to swiftly grasp its structure and organization within seconds. This visualization also serves as a powerful tool for observability, providing real-time updates on the status of various objects within the cluster. Users can effortlessly navigate through different objects, accessing their pertinent properties with just a click.
The Deployment View is particularly advantageous for beginners to Kubernetes, as it empowers users to effortlessly create Deployments, Pods, Services, and Ingresses through a straightforward drag-and-drop interface. Additionally, it facilitates the creation of links using the link helper feature, enabling seamless connections between workloads, Services, PVCs, and Ingresses in a visually intuitive manner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neLQGXQkkbc
In summary, the Deployment View elevates K8Studio to a higher echelon compared to Lens, primarily due to:
Comprehensive visualization of cluster structure, organization, and dependencies.
Real-time observability, offering insights into the status of various objects.
Optimized implementation capable of seamlessly handling large deployments.
User-friendly interface, ideal for beginners, facilitating object creation and dependency management through intuitive features like drag-and-drop or dependency helpers. For instance, linking a deployment with a service, a service with an ingress, or a deployment with a persistent volume claim (PVC).
In comparison, Lens lacks such a comprehensive view out of the box, and its visualization plugin is notably inadequate, failing to scale properly.
Node View
The NodeView is another invaluable visualization tool, offering insights into the status and load of each node within the cluster, along with the status of the pods hosted on each node. This is a great view for monitoring the status of nodes. With the metric server installed, users gain the ability to monitor CPU and memory usage, as well as the historical data for these metrics, providing crucial performance insights. Lens only provides a grid view of the nodes, which unfortunately lacks sufficient detail to effectively monitor the status of nodes
Grid View
Both IDEs provide pretty decent grid views of all the different Kubernetes objects. We believe that both views work quite well and offer users a good way of interacting with the cluster. The main difference we observe in this view is how Lens behaves under heavy load and real-time updates. This is where I believe the K8Studio Grid shines, as it is capable of handling an invaluable amount of updates and a large number of objects.
Another distinction is that in K8Studio, columns are filterable and support multi-sort.
RBAC
Managing users, groups, and service accounts, as well as roles and bindings, can be quite challenging in Kubernetes. The RBAC view in K8 Studio provides an excellent solution for creating users, understanding their permissions, managing roles, and comprehending their associated permissions. Additionally, it allows users to easily manage role bindings and understand which user groups or service accounts are bound to each role. Binding and unbinding roles is also straightforward with this feature.
Cluster Management
The primary distinction between K8Studio and Lens in this aspect lies in K8Studio’s capability to display the status of all clusters at once. Unlike Lens, K8Studio allows users to view cluster status without having to open each cluster individually. Within the cluster view, users can conveniently access pod statistics, CPU and memory usage per node, without having to navigate away from the cluster view. Furthermore, we’ve implemented the option to disable monitoring of cluster status for users who prefer not to utilize this feature
Another notable feature of K8Studio is its ability to allow users to create a folder structure that can be color-coded and supports multiple hierarchies. This feature is particularly beneficial for users who need to manage numerous clusters efficiently.
Licenses
Both K8Studio and Lens offer personal and professional versions, as well as an airtight version for computers without internet access. However, the key distinction between the two lies in pricing. In K8Studio, the airtight version does not incur any extra cost and is priced the same as the online professional version.
Roadmap
I believe the most exciting part is yet to unfold. With the recent release of version 1.0.0 and the implementation of a robust plugin system, K8Studio is poised to differentiate itself from Lens significantly. The forthcoming features currently under development will truly set it apart. Stay tuned for what’s to come.