15 tools that make Kubernetes easier

Kubernetes has become a standard way—many would say the standard way—to deploy containerized applications at scale. But if Kubernetes helps us to tame sprawling and complex container deployments, what’s available to help us tame Kubernetes? It too can be complex, messy, and difficult to manage.

As Kubernetes grows and evolves, no doubt many of its excesses will be tamed from within the project. But some users aren’t waiting around for Kubernetes to get any easier to work with, and have rolled their own solutions to many common problems with Kubernetes in production.

Goldpinger: Visualize Kubernetes clusters

Humans are visual creatures. Graphs and charts make it easier for us to understand the big picture. And given the scope and complexity of a Kubernetes cluster, we could use all of the visual help we can get.

The amusingly-named Goldpinger, open sourced by Bloomberg’s tech division, is a simple tool that runs inside a Kubernetes cluster and displays an interactive map of the relationships between the nodes. Healthy nodes appear in green, and unhealthy nodes in red. Just click on a node for details. You can customize the API with Swagger to roll in additional reporting, metrics, or other integrations.