Use the KOTS administration console UI

The Kubernetes Off-The-Shelf (KOTS) Admin UI provides a user interface to manage the Mission Control installation. It handles Mission Control configuration, licensing, and upgrades. You can use the kots kubectl plugin to open the KOTS admin interface.

Prerequisites

You need the following:

  • A downloaded Mission Control license file.

    Mission Control requires a license file to provide Kubernetes Off-The-Shelf (KOTS) or Helm with required information out installation. Information includes customer identifiers, software update channels, and entitlements.

    Are you exploring Mission Control as a solution for your organization? Fill out this registration form to request a community edition license.

    If you need a replacement license file or a non-community edition, or want to convert your Public Preview license to use a stable channel release version, contact your account team.

  • Make sure your environment has kotsadm installed. See the Preparing the Environment steps for runtime or kubernetes based installations.

Configure a local proxy or a service to open the KOTS admin UI

You can use a local proxy or the NodePort service to open the KOTS admin UI.

  • Local proxy

  • NodePort service

To configure a local proxy through which to open the Admin Console, do the following:

  1. Run this command on a pre-installed control plane mode server that runs the application manager kotsadm:

    kubectl kots admin-console -n NAMESPACE

    Replace NAMESPACE with the namespace value you specified during installation. The default is mission-control.

    When you run the kubectl command, it opens localhost port 8800 and forwards to the kotsadm service.

  2. Optional: Use the --port flag to specify an alternate port. See the Replicated documentation for flag details.

  3. Type Control+C to exit.

  4. Open a web browser to http://localhost:8800. This opens the Admin Console.

    The system prompts you for your license file the first time you authenticate with the KOTS admin interface during installation. The system doesn’t prompt you for license information when you re-open the KOTS admin interface for Mission Control management operations, such as adding a node.

To configure a NodePort service to open the Admin Console, do the following:

  1. Expose the KOTS admin service:

    kubectl expose svc kotsadm -n mission-control --name kotsadm-external-nodeport --type NodePort

    The expose svc command copies selectors from the existing internal ClusterIP service into a new service with the type of NodePort. The ClusterIP service is the one you’re connected to when you run kubectl kots admin-console.

  2. Retrieve the port:

    kubectl get svc -n mission-control kotsadm-external-nodeport
    Result

    This example demonstrates that you can use port 31967 on all nodes to connect with the KOTS interface. The port value will be unique to your cluster.

    NAME                        TYPE       CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)          AGE
    kotsadm-external-nodeport   NodePort   192.0.2.250   <none>        3000:31967/TCP   80s

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