How to access kubernetes microk8s dashboard remotely without Ingress? - kubernetes

Question

I am new to Kubernetes and i am trying to deploy a MicroKubernetes cluster on 4 raspberry PIs.
I am struggling with setting up the dashboard since (no joke) a total of about 30 hours now and starting to be extremely frustrated .
I just cannot access the dashboard remotely.
Solutions that didnt work out:
No.1 Ingress:
I managed to enable ingress but it seems to be extremely complicated to connect it to the dashboard since i manually have to resolve DNS properties inside pods and host machines.
I eventually gave up on that. There is also no documentation whatsoever available how to set an ingress up without having a valid bought domain pointing at your Ingress Node.
If you are able to guide me through this, i am up for it.
No.2 Change service type of dashboard to LoadBalancer or NodePort:
With this method i can actually expose the dashboard... but it can only be accessed through https.... Since dashbaord seems to use self signed certificates or some other mechanism i cannot access the dashboard via a browser. The browsers(chrome firefox) always refuse to connect to the dashboard... When i try to access via http the browsers say i need to use https.
No.3 kube-proxy:
This only allows Localhost connections. YOu can pass arguments to kube proxy to allow other hosts to access the dashboard... but then again we have the https/http problem
At this point it is just amazing to me how extremly hard it is to just access this simple dashboard... Can anybody give any advice on how to access it ?
a#k8s-node-1:~/kubernetes$ kctl describe service kubernetes-dashboard -n kube-system
Name: kubernetes-dashboard
Namespace: kube-system
Labels: k8s-app=kubernetes-dashboard
Annotations: <none>
Selector: k8s-app=kubernetes-dashboard
Type: NodePort
IP Family Policy: SingleStack
IP Families: IPv4
IP: 10.152.183.249
IPs: 10.152.183.249
Port: <unset> 443/TCP
TargetPort: 8443/TCP
NodePort: <unset> 32228/TCP
Endpoints: 10.1.140.67:8443
Session Affinity: None
External Traffic Policy: Cluster
$ kubectl edit svc -n kube-system kubernetes-dashboard
# Please edit the object below. Lines beginning with a '#' will be ignored,
# and an empty file will abort the edit. If an error occurs while saving this file will be
# reopened with the relevant failures.
#
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
annotations:
kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration: |
{"apiVersion":"v1","kind":"Service","metadata":{"annotations":{},"labels":{"k8s-app":"kubernetes-dashboard"},"name":"kubernetes-dashboard","namespace":"kube-system"},"spec":{"ports":[{"port":443,"targetPort":8443}],"selector":{"k8s>
creationTimestamp: "2022-03-21T14:30:10Z"
labels:
k8s-app: kubernetes-dashboard
name: kubernetes-dashboard
namespace: kube-system
resourceVersion: "43060"
selfLink: /api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/kubernetes-dashboard
uid: fcb45ccc-070b-4a4d-b987-41f5b7777559
spec:
clusterIP: 10.152.183.249
clusterIPs:
- 10.152.183.249
externalTrafficPolicy: Cluster
internalTrafficPolicy: Cluster
ipFamilies:
- IPv4
ipFamilyPolicy: SingleStack
ports:
- nodePort: 32228
port: 443
protocol: TCP
targetPort: 8443
selector:
k8s-app: kubernetes-dashboard
sessionAffinity: None
type: NodePort
status:
loadBalancer: {}
a#k8s-node-1:~/kubernetes$ kctl get services -n kube-system
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
metrics-server ClusterIP 10.152.183.233 <none> 443/TCP 165m
kube-dns ClusterIP 10.152.183.10 <none> 53/UDP,53/TCP,9153/TCP 142m
dashboard-metrics-scraper ClusterIP 10.152.183.202 <none> 8000/TCP 32m
kubernetes-dashboard NodePort 10.152.183.249 <none> 443:32228/TCP 32m
a#k8s-node-1:~/kubernetes$ cat dashboard-ingress.yaml
---
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
annotations:
kubernetes.io/ingress.class: nginx
nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/backend-protocol: "HTTPS"
name: dashboard
namespace: kube-system
spec:
rules:
- host: nonexistent.net
http:
paths:
- path: /
pathType: Prefix
backend:
service:
name: kubernetes-dashboard
port:
number: 8080
a#k8s-node-1:~/kubernetes$ kctl get pods --all-namespaces -o wide
NAMESPACE NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE IP NODE NOMINATED NODE READINESS GATES
kube-system calico-node-c4shb 1/1 Running 0 3h23m 192.168.180.47 k8s-node-2 <none> <none>
ingress nginx-ingress-microk8s-controller-nvcvx 1/1 Running 0 3h12m 10.1.140.66 k8s-node-2 <none> <none>
kube-system calico-node-ptwmk 1/1 Running 0 3h23m 192.168.180.48 k8s-node-3 <none> <none>
ingress nginx-ingress-microk8s-controller-hksg7 1/1 Running 0 3h12m 10.1.55.131 k8s-node-4 <none> <none>
ingress nginx-ingress-microk8s-controller-tk9dj 1/1 Running 0 3h12m 10.1.76.129 k8s-node-3 <none> <none>
ingress nginx-ingress-microk8s-controller-c8t54 1/1 Running 0 3h12m 10.1.109.66 k8s-node-1 <none> <none>
kube-system calico-node-k65fz 1/1 Running 0 3h22m 192.168.180.52 k8s-node-4 <none> <none>
kube-system coredns-64c6478b6c-584s8 1/1 Running 0 177m 10.1.109.67 k8s-node-1 <none> <none>
kube-system calico-kube-controllers-6966456d6b-vvnm6 1/1 Running 0 3h24m 10.1.109.65 k8s-node-1 <none> <none>
kube-system calico-node-7jhz9 1/1 Running 0 3h33m 192.168.180.46 k8s-node-1 <none> <none>
kube-system metrics-server-647bdc584d-ldf8q 1/1 Running 1 (3h19m ago) 3h20m 10.1.55.129 k8s-node-4 <none> <none>
kube-system kubernetes-dashboard-585bdb5648-8s9xt 1/1 Running 0 67m 10.1.140.67 k8s-node-2 <none> <none>
kube-system dashboard-metrics-scraper-69d9497b54-x7vt9 1/1 Running 0 67m 10.1.55.132 k8s-node-4 <none> <none>

Answer 1

Using an ingress is indeed the preferred way, but since you seem to have trouble in your environment, you can indeed use a LoadBalancer service.
To avoid the problem with the automatically generated certificates, provide your certificate and private key to the dashboard, for example as a secret, and use the flags --tls-key-file and --tls-cert-file to point to the certificate. More details: https://github.com/kubernetes/dashboard/blob/master/docs/user/certificate-management.md