YAKD (Yet Another Kubernetes Dashboard)

A lightweight, read-only Kubernetes dashboard for quick cluster inspection.

Time: ~5 minutes Difficulty: Beginner

What You Will Learn

• Deploying a Kubernetes dashboard with plain manifests
• Browsing cluster resources through a clean web UI
• Using YAKD alongside other demos for real-time monitoring

Why YAKD

YAKD is a simple, read-only dashboard. It does not require authentication and starts in seconds. This makes it a good fit for local development clusters where you want a quick visual overview without the overhead of a full-featured dashboard.

Deploy

Navigate to the demo directory:

cd demos/yakd

Then apply the manifests:

kubectl apply -f manifests/namespace.yaml
kubectl apply -f manifests/

Verify

kubectl get pods -n yakd-dashboard

Wait until the pod shows Running and 1/1 ready.

Access

kubectl port-forward svc/yakd-dashboard 8080:80 -n yakd-dashboard

Open http://localhost:8080 in your browser.

Or use minikube service:

minikube service yakd-dashboard -n yakd-dashboard

What is Happening

manifests/
  namespace.yaml     # yakd-dashboard namespace
  rbac.yaml          # ServiceAccount + ClusterRoleBinding (cluster-admin)
  deployment.yaml    # YAKD container with health probes
  service.yaml       # ClusterIP service on port 80

YAKD runs as a single pod with a Quarkus backend and React frontend. The ServiceAccount needs cluster-admin access to read resources across all namespaces for the dashboard view.

What You Can Do

YAKD provides a read-only view of your cluster. Use it to:

• Browse namespaces, deployments, pods, services, and config maps
• View pod logs in the browser
• Inspect resource YAML definitions
• Check pod status and events

It is a great companion while running the other demos in this repo. Deploy a few demos, then use YAKD to explore the resources they create.

Suggested Workflow

1. Deploy the Redis demo or Simple App
2. Open YAKD
3. Navigate to the relevant namespace
4. Inspect the pods, services, and config maps created by the demo
5. View live pod logs from the YAKD UI

Cleanup

kubectl delete namespace yakd-dashboard
kubectl delete clusterrolebinding yakd-dashboard

Further Reading

See docs/deep-dive.md for details on YAKD’s architecture, the cluster-admin security trade-off, and a comparison of YAKD vs Headlamp vs the official Kubernetes Dashboard.

Next Step

Move on to Headlamp for a more feature-rich Kubernetes UI.