New Mobile App Lets You Manage Kubernetes Clusters on the Go

For more than a year now, we've covered the Google's move to release Kubernetes under an open source license, and the steady pace at which the technology nearly has become as high profile as Docker and other tools in the container space. Contributors to the Kubernetes project include IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat, CoreOS, Mesosphere, and others.

Now, Skippbox has announced that it will debut Cabin, the first mobile app for the Kubernetes container orchestration system. As Kubernetes becomes a popular standard, this mobile management app has a lot of promise.

Managing clusters is at the heart of the app. "Building upon its line of Kubernetes solutions that improve user experience and simplify the deployment of Cloud-native applications, Skippbox created Cabin to offer microservices application developers and Cloud system operators the opportunity to manage Kubernetes clusters via their mobile devices," the announcement notes. It also adds this:

"Highly configurable, Cabin can view Kubernetes resources such as the standard pods, services and deployments, but also/as well as ingress rules, replicasets, secrets, volumes and more. With Cabin, users can quickly manage Kubernetes applications with easy scaling of deployments, execute commands in containers, access logs, and even add or delete labels.

Key features include:

Create basic deployments with single container image

Scale deployments and replication controllers

Expose deployments via services

Remove and add labels

Access logs in multiple containers

Execute commands in containers

Switch service types

Open NodePort services in browser

"Cabin allows users to quickly add multiple clusters and manage the Kubernetes resources that make up a microservices application. Applications can be scaled by moving a slider, rolling-updates can be triggered by specifying new container images, and for quick debugging you can access the logs and run a command in a container."

 "With its key primitives for building distributed applications, Kubernetes is emerging as the standard for container orchestration," said Skippbox Founder Sebastien Goasguen. "We created Cabin so developers can manage Kubernetes applications on-the-go with interactions that exhibit the full strength of Kubernetes."

"We wanted to make it even easier for people to use their Kubernetes clusters and benefit from the powerful API driving them. With Cabin, application deployments, rolling updates and debugging can be done quickly," added Goasguen. "Wherever you are, Cabin gives you direct access to your Kubernetes clusters with intuitive actions that will remind you of kubectl, the K8s client."

"Cabin's ability to distill the breadth and depth of Kubernetes into a simple mobile UI is quite a feat," said Gabe Monroy, CTO at Deis. "The Deis team is passionate about improving Kubernetes usability and Cabin is a great example of that."

Skippbox is planning additional features for Cabin such as Kubernetes cluster provisioning by partnering with public cloud providers, and an enterprise version that can be run on-premise.

Cabin runs on iPhone as well as iPad, and is now available for free from the Apple App Store. An Android version of Cabin is also currently in development.