Kubernetes Dashboard gave operators a browser interface for seeing applications, inspecting failures and changing cluster resources without doing every task at a command line. It helped make objects such as running containers, deployments and storage easier to explore. The original Dashboard project is now retired, so this entry is most useful when identifying an existing installation or planning its replacement. Any replacement interface still needs access controls appropriate to the actions its users can perform.
Current guidance
The original Kubernetes Dashboard is archived and no longer maintained. Its upstream recommends considering Headlamp.
Choose a current UI according to authentication, RBAC, supported clusters and extension requirements. A dashboard is an administrative access path, so its exposure and service-account permissions matter as much as its appearance.
Test a least-privileged user's view and actions before making it broadly available. Keep ordinary administrative tooling available during migration. Headlamp is an upstream-recommended alternative, not a guarantee that every Dashboard workflow or plugin maps directly.
Historical upstream link check · 2026-10-09
The recorded upstream address redirects to https://github.com/kubernetes-retired/dashboard and returned HTTP 200 on 2026-10-09. GitHub marks kubernetes-retired/dashboard as archived. This confirms the repository's read-only archive state; any successor or supported distribution needs separate evidence. GitHub resolves the old repository identity to kubernetes-retired/dashboard. Link availability does not certify the historical installation instructions or current security support.
Website availability is separate from project, chart and image support. Use the current guidance and primary sources on this page to assess the distribution.
Historical Kubedex content
Preserved for context. Commands, versions, prices and results below reflect the original research.
Kubernetes Dashboard is a general purpose, web-based UI for Kubernetes clusters. It allows users to manage applications running in the cluster and troubleshoot them, as well as manage the cluster itself.
The dashboard is a web-based Kubernetes user interface. You can use Dashboard to deploy containerized applications to a Kubernetes cluster, troubleshoot your containerized application, and manage the cluster itself along with its attendant resources. You can use Dashboard to get an overview of applications running on your cluster, as well as for creating or modifying individual Kubernetes resources (such as Deployments, Jobs, DaemonSets, etc). For example, you can scale a Deployment, initiate a rolling update, restart a pod or deploy new applications using a deploy wizard.
The dashboard also provides information on the state of Kubernetes resources in your cluster, and on any errors that may have occurred.
Using Dashboard
Following sections describe views of the Kubernetes Dashboard UI; what they provide and how can they be used.
Navigation
When there are Kubernetes objects defined in the cluster, Dashboard shows them in the initial view. By default, only objects from the default namespace are shown and this can be changed using the namespace selector located in the navigation menu.
The dashboard shows most Kubernetes object kinds and groups them in a few menu categories.
Admin
View for cluster and namespace administrators. It lists Nodes, Namespaces, and Persistent Volumes and has detail views for them. Node list view contains CPU and memory usage metrics aggregated across all Nodes. The details view shows the metrics for a Node, its specification, status, allocated resources, events and pods running on the node.
Workloads
Entry point view that shows all applications running in the selected namespace. The view lists applications by workload kind (e.g., Deployments, Replica Sets, Stateful Sets, etc.) and each workload kind can be viewed separately. The lists summarize actionable information about the workloads, such as the number of ready pods for a Replica Set or current memory usage for a Pod.
Detail views for workloads show status and specification information and surface relationships between objects. For example, Pods that Replica Set is controlling or New Replica Sets and Horizontal Pod Autoscale for Deployments.
Services and discovery
Services and discovery view shows Kubernetes resources that allow for exposing services to the external world and discovering them within a cluster. For that reason, Service and Ingress views show Pods targeted by them, internal endpoints for cluster connections and external endpoints for external users.
Storage
Storage view shows Persistent Volume Claim resources which are used by applications for storing data.
Config
Config view shows all Kubernetes resources that are used for live configuration of applications running in clusters. This is now Config Maps and Secrets. The view allows for editing and managing config objects and displays secrets hidden by default.
Logs viewer
Pod lists and detail pages link to logs viewer that is built into Dashboard. The viewer allows for drilling down logs from containers belonging to a single Pod.
NOTE:
- Kubeconfig Authentication method does not support external identity providers or certificate-based authentication.
- The dashboard can only be accessed over HTTPS
- Heapster has to be running in the cluster for the metrics and graphs to be available. Read more about it in Integrations guide.
Sources & further reading
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