Mirantis Lens Adds Extension API, Offering Seamless Integration with any Kubernetes Integrated Component, Toolkit, or Service

World’s most popular Kubernetes IDE provides a simplified, consistent entry point for developers, testers, integrators, and DevOps, to ship code faster at scale

Campbell, CA, November 12, 2020 — Mirantis, the open cloud company behind the popular Lens Kubernetes IDE project, today announced a new Extensions API, enabling rapid development of extensions for seamless integration with any Kubernetes integrated component, toolkit, or service. In conjunction with the announcement, Mirantis and makers of many popular CNCF projects announced Lens extensions.

The Extensions API and first batch of Extensions are expected to be generally available around

KubeCon Virtual North America 2020, but are already available for partners.

The world’s most popular Kubernetes integrated development environment (IDE) with more than one million downloads, Lens provides developers with a cloud native IDE that contains all the popular development tools. The Extension API and Extensions made in collaboration with many popular CNCF projects, opens up the world to Kubernetes developers greatly simplifying creating, shipping, and running cloud-native applications.

Download Lens from the project website

https://k8slens.dev. 

Using Lens Extensions, users can add custom visualizations and functionality to support their preferred cloud native technologies and to accelerate their development workflows. The extensions API will provide a wide array of options for extension authors to plug directly into the Lens IDE. Extensions can also be used in conjunction with services deployed from the Helm chart repository for a fully integrated experience.

“Extensions API will unlock collaboration with technology vendors and transform Lens into a fully featured cloud native development IDE that we can extend and enhance without limits,” said Miska Kaipiainen, co-founder of Lens OSS project and senior director of Engineering at Mirantis. “If you are a vendor, Lens will provide the best channel to reach tens of thousands of active Kubernetes developers and gain distribution to your technology in a way that did not exist before. At the same time, the users of Lens enjoy quality features, technologies and integrations easier than ever.” 

Several partners in the Lens ecosystem today announced support for Lens extensions: Kubernetes security vendors

Aqua and Carbonetes, API gateway maker Ambassador Labs (formerly Datawire), and AIOps pioneer Carbon Relay. Other partners are actively building extensions including nCipher (hardware-based key management), API gateway maker Kong, and container security solution provider StackRox. Hear more from partners here.

“Introducing an extensions API to Lens is a game-changer for Kubernetes operators and developers, because it will foster an ecosystem of cloud-native tools that can be used in context with the full power of Kubernetes controls, at the user’s fingertips,” said Viswajith Venugopal, StackRox software engineer and developer of KubeLinter. “We look forward to integrating KubeLinter with Lens for a more seamless user experience.”

“Kubernetes is an amazingly powerful technology, but it’s complex,” said Daniel Terry, lead designer, SEB Bank, Sweden. “This can be challenging for developers whose priorities are to ship code as fast as possible, not manage infrastructure. At SEB, we believe that Lens will help our developers overcome this challenge, simplifying Kubernetes and driving results for both novices and experts. We’re excited that the extensions in Lens 4.0 will enable other Kubernetes related services to integrate smoothly across the full Lens user experience, making the Kubernetes journey for our developers much easier.” 

Key Features at a Glance

• Easiest Way to Run Kubernetes. Learn by Doing: Lens installs anywhere, eliminates the need to wrangle credentials, and provides an intuitive, clean user interface that hides kubectl complexity and coordinates access to code editors, version control, the Docker CLI, and other desktop and remote tools. Thanks to the intuitive interface, novices can quickly and safely learn and get up to speed working with the Kubernetes architecture without being overwhelmed by complexity. Power users have productivity but with full granular control, when they need it.

• Unified, Secure, Multi-cluster Management On Any Platform: Lens provides agentless read and write management for any number of Kubernetes clusters from an intuitive desktop application. Clusters can be local (e.g. minikube) or external (e.g. Mirantis Kubernetes Engine, EKS, AKS, GKE, Pharos, UCP, Rancher, Tanzu or OpenShift) and are added simply by importing the kubeconfig with cluster details. RBAC security is preserved, as Lens uses the standard kubectl API.

• Observability and Remediation: Lens provides the insight and ability to go from observation to actionable in the fastest way possible. Users see all relevant graphs and resource utilization charts integrated into the dashboard via Prometheus. When there is an alert the user clicks on it to get detailed status, consumption, and configuration on the pod in question. The user can then immediately access the logs to search for error messages and if needed one-click to get a terminal session to take any actions.

• Helm Chart Service Deployment: Users can quickly search or browse Helm charts for kubernetes-deployable services. Once chosen a one-click install button deploys the Helm chart to the currently selected Kubernetes cluster. Services can be upgraded with a single click when new versions are available. 

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k8slens.slack.com.