Be more productive with Kubernetes

Context names

So you’re working on multiple clusters and they don’t have meaningful names :

$ kubectl config get-contexts
CURRENT   NAME                 CLUSTER
*         some-cluster         some-cluster
          some-other-cluster   some-other-cluster
          yet-another-cluser   yet-another-cluser

You can rename your contexts to make them more meaningful and easier to switch between them. Use kubectl config rename-context :

$ kubectl config rename-context some-cluster dev-cluster
Context "some-cluster" renamed to "dev-cluster".

And now the context names are more meaningful and it’s more simple to switch :

$ kubectl config get-contexts
CURRENT   NAME                 CLUSTER
*         dev-cluster          some-cluster
          staging-cluster      some-other-cluster
          prod-cluster         yet-another-cluser
$ kubectl config use-context staging-cluster
Switched to context "staging-cluster".

kubectx and kubens

kubectx and kubens are two tools can make it even more simple to switch between contexts and active namespace. Super easy to install and use :

$ kubectx
dev-cluster
staging-cluster
prod-cluster
$ kubectx staging-cluster
✔ Switched to context "staging-cluster".
$ kubens
default
some-namespace
yet-another-namespace
$ kubens some-namespace
✔ Active namespace is "some-namespace"

oh my zsh

If you’re using zsh, you should try oh my zsh. Be sure to activate the kubectl plugin to enable several shortcut commands :

$ kgns
NAME                          STATUS   AGE
default                       Active   50d
some-namespace                Active   37d
yet-another-namespace         Active   19d

Kubernetes debugging

You can start a one-off pod in a cluster to execute commands from inside the cluster. Here is an example with Ubuntu :

$ kubectl run my-ubuntu -ti --rm --image=ubuntu -- /bin/bash

If you don't see a command prompt, try pressing enter.
root@my-ubuntu:/#