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Access TiDB Dashboard

TiDB Dashboard is a visualized tool introduced since TiDB v4.0 and is used to monitor and diagnose TiDB clusters. For details, see TiDB Dashboard.

This document describes how to access TiDB Dashboard in Kubernetes.

note

Due to the special environment of Kubernetes, some features of TiDB Dashboard are not supported in TiDB Operator. See Unsupported TiDB Dashboard features for details.

In this document, you can use the Discovery service to access TiDB Dashboard. TiDB Operator starts a Discovery service for each TiDB cluster. The Discovery service can return the corresponding startup parameters for each PD Pod to support the startup of the PD cluster. The Discovery service can also send proxy requests to the TiDB Dashboard.

Warning

The TiDB Dashboard is available in the /dashboard path of the PD. Other paths outside of this may not have access control.

Prerequisites​

To access TiDB Dashboard smoothly in Kubernetes, you need to use TiDB Operator v1.1.1 (or later versions) and the TiDB cluster (v4.0.1 or later versions).

You need to configure the TidbCluster object file as follows to enable quick access to TiDB Dashboard:

apiVersion: pingcap.com/v1alpha1
kind: TidbCluster
metadata:
  name: basic
spec:
  pd:
    enableDashboardInternalProxy: true

Method 1. Access TiDB Dashboard by port forward​

Warning

This guide shows how to quickly access TiDB Dashboard. Do NOT use this method in the production environment. For production environments, refer to Access TiDB Dashboard by Ingress.

TiDB Dashboard is built in the PD component in TiDB 4.0 and later versions. You can refer to the following example to quickly deploy a TiDB cluster in Kubernetes.

  1. Deploy the following example .yaml file into the Kubernetes cluster by running the kubectl apply -f command:

    apiVersion: pingcap.com/v1alpha1
    kind: TidbCluster
    metadata:
      name: basic
    spec:
      version: v5.3.0
      timezone: UTC
      pvReclaimPolicy: Delete
      pd:
        enableDashboardInternalProxy: true
        baseImage: pingcap/pd
        maxFailoverCount: 0
        replicas: 1
        requests:
          storage: "10Gi"
        config: {}
      tikv:
        baseImage: pingcap/tikv
        maxFailoverCount: 0
        replicas: 1
        requests:
          storage: "100Gi"
        config: {}
      tidb:
        baseImage: pingcap/tidb
        maxFailoverCount: 0
        replicas: 1
        service:
          type: ClusterIP
        config: {}

  2. After the cluster is created, expose TiDB Dashboard to the local machine by running the following command:

    kubectl port-forward svc/basic-discovery -n ${namespace} 10262:10262

    By default, port-forward binds to the IP address 127.0.0.1. If you need to use another IP address to access the machine running the port-forward command, you can add the --address option and specify the IP address to be bound.

  3. Visit http://localhost:10262/dashboard in your browser to access TiDB Dashboard.

Method 2. Access TiDB Dashboard by Ingress​

In important production environments, it is recommended to expose the TiDB Dashboard service using Ingress.

Prerequisites​

Before using Ingress, install the Ingress controller in your Kubernetes cluster. Otherwise, simply creating Ingress resources does not take effect.

To deploy the Ingress controller, refer to ingress-nginx. You can also choose from various Ingress controllers.

Use Ingress​

You can expose the TiDB Dashboard service outside the Kubernetes cluster by using Ingress. In this way, the service can be accessed outside Kubernetes via http/https. For more details, see Ingress.

The following is an .yaml example of accessing TiDB Dashboard using Ingress:

  1. Deploy the following .yaml file to the Kubernetes cluster by running the kubectl apply -f command:

    apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
    kind: Ingress
    metadata:
      name: access-dashboard
      namespace: ${namespace}
    spec:
      rules:
        - host: ${host}
          http:
            paths:
              - backend:
                  serviceName: ${cluster_name}-discovery
                  servicePort: 10262
                path: /dashboard

  2. After Ingress is deployed, you can access TiDB Dashboard via http://${host}/dashboard outside the Kubernetes cluster.

Use Ingress with TLS​

Ingress supports TLS. See Ingress TLS. The following example shows how to use Ingress TLS:

apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: access-dashboard
  namespace: ${namespace}
spec:
  tls:
  - hosts:
    - ${host}
    secretName: testsecret-tls
  rules:
    - host: ${host}
      http:
        paths:
          - backend:
              serviceName: ${cluster_name}-discovery
              servicePort: 10262
            path: /dashboard

In the above file, testsecret-tls contains tls.crt and tls.key needed for example.com.

This is an example of testsecret-tls:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: testsecret-tls
  namespace: default
data:
  tls.crt: base64 encoded cert
  tls.key: base64 encoded key
type: kubernetes.io/tls

After Ingress is deployed, visit https://{host}/dashboard to access TiDB Dashboard.

Method 3. Use NodePort Service​

Because ingress can only be accessed with a domain name, it might be difficult to use ingress in some scenarios. In this case, to access and use TiDB Dashboard, you can add a Service of NodePort type.

The following is an .yaml example using the Service of NodePort type to access the TiDB Dashboard. To deploy the following .yaml file into the Kubernetes cluster, you can run the kubectl apply -f command:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: access-dashboard
  namespace: ${namespace}
spec:
  ports:
  - name: dashboard
    port: 10262
    protocol: TCP
    targetPort: 10262
  type: NodePort
  selector:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: discovery
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ${cluster_name}
    app.kubernetes.io/name: tidb-cluster

After deploying the Service, you can access TiDB Dashboard via https://{nodeIP}:{nodePort}/dashboard. By default, nodePort is randomly assigned by Kubernetes. You can also specify an available port in the .yaml file.

Note that if there is more than one PD Pod in the cluster, you need to set spec.pd.enableDashboardInternalProxy: true in the TidbCluster CR to ensure normal access to TiDB Dashboard.

Unsupported TiDB Dashboard features​

Due to the special environment of Kubernetes, some features of TiDB Dashboard are not supported in TiDB Operator, including:

  • In Overview -> Monitor & Alert -> View Metrics, the link does not direct to the Grafana monitoring dashboard. If you need to access Grafana, refer to Access the Grafana monitoring dashboard.

  • The log search feature is unavailable. If you need to view the log of a component, execute kubectl logs ${pod_name} -n {namespace}. You can also view logs using the log service of the Kubernetes cluster.

  • In Cluster Info -> Hosts, the Disk Usage cannot display correctly. You can view the disk usage of each component by viewing the component dashboards in the TidbMonitor dashboard. You can also view the disk usage of Kubernetes nodes by deploying a Kubernetes host monitoring system.