Headlamp

A full-featured, extensible Kubernetes dashboard with RBAC support.

Time: ~10 minutes Difficulty: Beginner

What You Will Learn

• Installing Headlamp via Helm
• Creating a ServiceAccount token for authentication
• Navigating cluster resources, logs, and events
• Using the built-in terminal for exec into pods

Why Headlamp

Headlamp is a CNCF Sandbox project that provides a production-grade Kubernetes UI. Unlike simpler dashboards, Headlamp supports:

• RBAC-aware authentication
• Plugin system for extending the UI
• Cluster and namespace resource browsing
• In-browser pod terminal (exec)
• Resource editing from the UI
• Multi-cluster support

Install

helm repo add headlamp https://kubernetes-sigs.github.io/headlamp/
helm repo update

helm install headlamp headlamp/headlamp \
  --namespace headlamp \
  --create-namespace

Create a Service Account Token

Headlamp requires a token for authentication:

# Create a service account
kubectl create serviceaccount headlamp-admin -n headlamp

# Bind cluster-admin role (for local dev only, never in production)
kubectl create clusterrolebinding headlamp-admin \
  --clusterrole=cluster-admin \
  --serviceaccount=headlamp:headlamp-admin

# Generate a token
kubectl create token headlamp-admin -n headlamp --duration=24h

Copy the token output. You will paste it into the Headlamp login screen.

Access

kubectl port-forward svc/headlamp -n headlamp 8080:80

Open http://localhost:8080, paste the token from the previous step, and click “Authenticate”.

What You Can Do

Feature	Description
Workloads	View and manage Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, Jobs, CronJobs
Pods	Live logs, exec terminal, resource usage, events
Networking	Services, Ingresses, Endpoints, NetworkPolicies
Storage	PersistentVolumes, PersistentVolumeClaims, StorageClasses
Config	ConfigMaps, Secrets (values hidden by default)
RBAC	Roles, RoleBindings, ClusterRoles, ClusterRoleBindings
Cluster	Nodes, Namespaces, CRDs, Events

Suggested Workflow

1. Deploy several demos from this repo (Redis, ArgoCD, Cert-Manager)
2. Open Headlamp
3. Browse each namespace to see the resources
4. Click on a pod to view live logs
5. Use the built-in terminal to exec into a running pod
6. Edit a ConfigMap from the UI and watch the pod pick up changes

Cleanup

kubectl delete clusterrolebinding headlamp-admin
kubectl delete serviceaccount headlamp-admin -n headlamp
helm uninstall headlamp -n headlamp
kubectl delete namespace headlamp

Further Reading

See docs/deep-dive.md for details on Headlamp’s CNCF status, token-based authentication, plugin architecture, multi-cluster support, and how it compares to other dashboard options.

Next Step

Move on to CloudNativePG to run production-grade PostgreSQL with automatic failover.