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Kubetail

Basic Features

By default, Kubetail uses your Kubernetes API to watch your workloads and fetch log data. All of the features described here are available in the Kubetail web dashboard without any additional installs.

Multiple clusters

Section titled “Multiple clusters”

Kubetail reads your kubeconfig file to discover available clusters and uses the credentials defined there to authenticate against each one. When you have more than one context configured, a cluster picker appears in the top navigation bar so you can switch between them. Kubetail watches the kubeconfig file for changes and refreshes the list automatically, so newly added contexts appear without a restart.

Kubetail dashboard home page showing the cluster picker Kubetail dashboard home page showing the cluster picker

Workload filters

Section titled “Workload filters”

On the dashboard home page you can see all your workloads in real-time and narrow the view by namespace, workload type and search.

Kubetail dashboard home page showing workload search Kubetail dashboard home page showing workload search

Real-time tail

Section titled “Real-time tail”

Selecting a workload opens the logging console, which starts tailing all of its container logs simultaneously. New log lines stream in as they are written and you can scroll up to see previous lines. You can also use the viewer controls to jump to the beginning of the stream, jump to a specific time or jump to the end to resume tailing.

Kubetail dashboard logging console showing web server log streams Kubetail dashboard logging console showing web server log streams

Container lifecycle tracking

Section titled “Container lifecycle tracking”

Kubetail watches Kubernetes pod events in real time. When a new pod or container starts — during a rolling update, a crash-restart, or a scale-out — its logs are added to the active stream automatically. When a pod is deleted its log source is removed from the stream. You do not need to reopen the console or manually refresh to see these changes.

Log filters

Section titled “Log filters”

In the logging console you can filter logs by:

  • Container — show only specific containers by name.
  • Node — show only containers running on a particular node.
  • Region / Zone — filter by cloud region or availability zone (sourced from topology.kubernetes.io/region and topology.kubernetes.io/zone node labels).
  • OS / Arch — filter by operating system or CPU architecture (sourced from kubernetes.io/os and kubernetes.io/arch node labels).

Any combination of filters can be applied at once and removing all filters returns the full stream.