5 Rancher Dashboard Extensions #

Extensions allow users, developers, partners, and customers to extend and enhance the Rancher UI. SUSE Edge 3.1 provides KubeVirt and Akri dashboard extensions.

See Rancher documentation for general information about Rancher Dashboard Extensions.

5.1 Installation #

All SUSE Edge 3.1 components including dashboard extensions are distributed as OCI artifacts. To install SUSE Edge Extensions you can use Rancher Dashboard UI, Helm or Fleet:

5.1.1 Installing with Rancher Dashboard UI #

Click Extensions in the Configuration section of the navigation sidebar.
On the Extensions page, click the three dot menu at the top right and select Manage Repositories.
Each extension is distributed via it’s own OCI artefact. Therefore, you need to add repositories for each extension that needs to be installed.
On the Repositories page, click Create.
In the form, specify the repository name and OCI artifact URL, and click Create.
Akri Dashboard Extension Repository URL: oci://registry.suse.com/edge/3.1/akri-dashboard-extension-chart
KubeVirt Dashboard Extension Repository URL: oci://registry.suse.com/edge/3.1/kubevirt-dashboard-extension-chart
You can see that the extension repository is added to the list and is in Active state.
Navigate back to the Extensions in the Configuration section of the navigation sidebar.
In the Available tab you can see the extensions available for installation.
On the extension card click Install and confirm the installation.
Once the extension is installed Rancher UI prompts to reload the page as described in the Installing Extensions Rancher documentation page.

5.1.2 Installing with Helm #

# KubeVirt extension
helm install kubevirt-dashboard-extension oci://registry.suse.com/edge/3.1/kubevirt-dashboard-extension-chart --version 1.1.0 --namespace cattle-ui-plugin-system

# Akri extension
helm install akri-dashboard-extension oci://registry.suse.com/edge/3.1/akri-dashboard-extension-chart --version 1.1.0 --namespace cattle-ui-plugin-system

Note

The extensions need to be installed in cattle-ui-plugin-system namespace.

Note

After an extension is installed, Rancher Dashboard UI needs to be reloaded.

5.1.3 Installing with Fleet #

Installing Dashboard Extensions with Fleet requires defining a gitRepo resource which points to a Git repository with custom fleet.yaml bundle configuration file(s).

# KubeVirt extension fleet.yaml
defaultNamespace: cattle-ui-plugin-system
helm:
  releaseName: kubevirt-dashboard-extension
  chart: oci://registry.suse.com/edge/3.1/kubevirt-dashboard-extension-chart
  version: "1.1.0"

# Akri extension fleet.yaml
defaultNamespace: cattle-ui-plugin-system
helm:
  releaseName: akri-dashboard-extension
  chart: oci://registry.suse.com/edge/3.1/akri-dashboard-extension-chart
  version: "1.1.0"

Note

The releaseName property is required and needs to match the extension name to get the extension correctly installed.

cat <<- EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: fleet.cattle.io/v1alpha1
metadata:
  name: edge-dashboard-extensions
  namespace: fleet-local
spec:
  repo: https://github.com/suse-edge/fleet-examples.git
  branch: main
  paths:
  - fleets/kubevirt-dashboard-extension/
  - fleets/akri-dashboard-extension/
EOF

For more information see Fleet (Chapter 6, Fleet) section and fleet-examples repository.

Once the Extensions are installed they are listed in Extensions section under Installed tabs. Since they are not installed via Apps/Marketplace, they are marked with Third-Party label.

5.2 KubeVirt Dashboard Extension #

KubeVirt Extension provides basic virtual machine management for Rancher dashboard UI. Its capabilities are described in Using KubeVirt Rancher Dashboard Extension (Section 18.7.2, “Using KubeVirt Rancher Dashboard Extension”).

5.3 Akri Dashboard Extension #

Akri is a Kubernetes Resource Interface that lets you easily expose heterogeneous leaf devices (such as IP cameras and USB devices) as resources in a Kubernetes cluster, while also supporting the exposure of embedded hardware resources such as GPUs and FPGAs. Akri continually detects nodes that have access to these devices and schedules workloads based on them.

Akri Dashboard Extension allows you to use Rancher Dashboard user interface to manage and monitor leaf devices and run workloads once these devices are discovered.

Extension capabilities are further described in Akri section (Section 12.1.4, “Akri Rancher Dashboard Extension”).