OpenLens Deprecated Logs & Shell

OpenLens is the open-source project behind one of the most adopted Kubernetes IDE, Lens. In simple terms, it is nothing less than Lens without its proprietary components. OpenLens falls under the MIT license and has been actively maintained by the community and the Lens team. The installation of OpenLens is a bit complex as you have to build it from the source, but many open-source contributors maintain builds depending upon the operating system. OpenLens also releases the same release that Lens IDE does and is a mirror image in terms of appearance. With the latest release, i.e. v6.3.0, the OpenLens governance team has deprecated some of its best features, causing chaos in the open-source community. In this blog, we will talk about the deprecated feature and an alternative solution.

What is missing on the OpenLens v6.3.0?

With the latest release of OpenLens v6.3.0, you won’t be able to access logs and the terminal of your Kubernetes workloads/nodes attached to the cluster from the IDE by default. These extensions are permanently removed from the OpenLens and moved to Lens Desktop. Here are some references for the same -

• https://github.com/lensapp/lens/issues/6819
• https://github.com/lensapp/lens/issues/6823

Now, let’s dive a bit into the history. Lens 6 is by far the most important release from the Lens team that comes with many new additional features but only with the paid subscriptions. With the Lens6 release, they talked about their vision and introduced new subscription models primarily in two tiers: Lens Personal (with limited support) and Lens Pro. They have also updated their terms and conditions, which can be read from their official blog. Lens Personal is free to use but comes with limited features and is limited for educational purposes or for startups with less than $10 million in annual revenue or funding.

The recent OpenLens v0.6.3 release doesn't provide the capability to access logs and shell extensions. This has impacted the community, and the heavy users who relied on these extensions are looking for ways to resolve this redacted feature. They are limited to two options. The first is either to use a personal license or to move to the pro version by paying a subscription fee if their organization exceeds the $10mn revenue or funding criteria. The second option is to look for alternatives.

Users looking for an alternative open-source project that can provide them the capability to access real-time logs and a shell extension should consider Devtron.

Introducing Devtron, An Open source alternative to OpenLens

Devtron is an open-source alternative to OpenLens with all your standard features and a lot more. The Devtron project is completely open-source and offers a much wider range of capabilities over and beyond shell and log extensions. It helps you to deploy and manage all your Kubernetes workloads. It is built in a modular fashion that comprises of two primary components -

1. Kubernetes Dashboard by Devtron
2. Devtron Dashboard with CI/CD

Kubernetes dashboard by Devtron helps you manage the lifecycle of Helm applications and Kubernetes objects associated with the chart, circumventing all the complexities and challenges of dealing with Kubernetes directly. Read about the challenges that Devtron’s Dashboard solves to explore ways you can simplify operations at your organization.

Why Kubernetes Dashboard by Devtron over other alternatives

Adopting Devtron only for bash and log extensions will be throttling the power that Devtron can unleash for your application teams. Let's understand how Devtron can become your go-to tool for managing your clusters and workloads in Kubernetes.

• Cluster Management

  • use your custom images of your favorite tools like - k9s/ netshoot/ busybox/ helm/ kubectl from the cluster terminal in the browser,
  • Multi-cluster enabled,
  • Preconfigured RBAC, so you don't have to use kubeconfig,
  • Dedicated panel to view resource usage details

• Workload Management

  • grep logs across multiple pods with ease,
  • exec into the pods,
  • deploy any helm chart or K8s application,
  • easy rollback with configurations,
  • compare configurations diff,
  • manage helm app across multiple clusters,
  • easily upgrade helm charts,
  • faster debugging of helm charts with resource grouping, events, manifests, logs, and a lot more.

While you are evaluating your options, Devtron may be able to tick all of your requirements at one go.