Lens Install with CN2 Extension

SUMMARY This document describes the installation procedure for both Lens and the CN2 extension for Lens, as well as how to connect a Juniper® Cloud-Native Contrail Networking (CN2) cluster to Lens.

Benefits

Lens is an integrated development environment (IDE) for Kubernetes. The Lens open source tool is implemented as an interface to manage, monitor, and troubleshoot CN2 clusters.

Benefits include:

Ease of usability and rich end-user experience.
Unified, secure, multi-cluster management on any platform: support for hundreds of clusters.
Standalone application: no need to install anything in-cluster.
Real-time cluster state visualization.
Resource utilization charts and trends with history powered by built-in Prometheus.
Smart terminal access to nodes and containers.
Clusters can be local (for example, minikube) or external (for example, EKS, GKE, or AKS).

Download and Install Lens

To download and install Lens:

From your browser, navigate to Lens, and select your OS from the drop-down list to download Lens.

Note:
Lens v5.4.4 is the supported and tested version with CN2 extension.

The download file looks similar to Lens Setup 5.4.4-latest.20220602.2.
Double-click the file you just downloaded from the Lens website.
Follow the setup wizard onscreen prompts.
Click Finish to complete the installation.

Lens is installed and listed as Lens on your machine.

Download and Install the CN2 Extension for Lens

The CN2 extension is a Lens Custom Extension.

Use Lens extensions to add custom visualizations and functionality to accelerate development workflows for all the technologies and services that integrate with Kubernetes.
Extensions are a plug-in that you can upload directly to the Lens UI.
Extensions are developed using the Lens Extensions API.

To download and install the CN2 extension for Lens:

From your browser, download the CN2 extension for Lens from Juniper Networks Software Downloads.

The file name is similar to cn2_lens_extension-VERSION_TAG.tar.
Click Launch Lens to start Lens. You are in the Lens application for the remainder of this section.
Sign in with your Lens ID username and password. Follow the prompts to create a Lens ID if you do not have one.
From the top menu bar, select File > Extensions.
In the Extensions window, click the folder icon to select the CN2 extension TAR file you downloaded in Step 1. Then, click Install.
Lens begins installing the CN2 extension. This process takes approximately 10 minutes. You then see a message indicating a successful installation. The installed extension status Enabled appears on your screen. If Status is Disabled, right-click the ":" symbol and select Enable to enable the extension.

Connect Your CN2 Cluster to Lens

To connect your CN2 cluster to Lens:

Click Launch Lens in the Lens application to start Lens. You are working in the Lens application for the remainder of this procedure.
Select File > Add Cluster.
In the Add Clusters from Kubeconfig window, copy and paste the contents of your kubeconfig file or your YAML file or files for the clusters you want to manage. Click Add clusters.
You are now in the Clusters window. Lens automatically populates the Clusters window with all of the valid clusters Lens finds in your folder. You can have multiple CN2 cluster configurations in your folder (multiple clusters).
Click the cluster you want to connect to, and Lens automatically connects to that cluster.
You are now connected to the CN2 cluster.
In the left pane, where the Lens options are listed, click CN2 to interact with your cluster.

If you don't see the CN2 menu, select Lens > View > Reload.

CN2 is your extension for Lens. You can select one of the following: CN2 > Infrastructure, Networking, Workloads, or Monitoring.

Note:
Known Limitation: Lens supports two theme modes, which are Dark and Light. CN2 extension supports Light mode only.

Uninstall the CN2 Extension

To uninstall the CN2 extension:

Select Lens > Extensions in the Lens application.
In Installed extensions, click the " : " and select Uninstall.

Figure 1: Uninstall Lens