Lightbend Console

Version (1.2.17) (January 25 2022)

Lightbend Console enables you to observe and monitor Lightbend Platform applications running on Kubernetes.

In conjunction with Lightbend Telemetry, the Console provides out-of-the-box observability for Play, Akka, Lagom and Cloudflow(formerly Lightbend Pipelines) applications running on Kubernetes.

The Console works with Lightbend Platform to provide visibility into your distributed applications. Grafana and Prometheus are included and pre-configured for quick and easy setup, allowing you to focus on building the core business value of your applications.

Lightbend Console includes the following:

• A Kubernetes cluster view of running pods
• Observability for Akka, Play, Lagom and Cloudflow applications
• Preinstalled Lightbend Telemetry Grafana dashboards
• A Cloudflow (formerly Lightbend Pipelines) application dashboard

A Lightbend Subscription includes the Lightbend Console as part of Lightbend Platform. Lightbend Platform also includes:

• Lightbend Telemetry
• Akka Resilience Enhancements
• Akka Persistence Enhancements
• Fortify SCA for Scala

Console architecture

Deploying distributed applications to achieve the Reactive goals of responsiveness, resilience, and elasticity involves use of complex technologies such as tools for packaging, orchestration, and virtualization. During development, the ability to test system components in a simulated environment is a key to success. Lightbend Console allows developers to verify, observe, and fine-tune applications in the development environment. Once deployed, the ability to visualize the running pieces and monitor their health is critical to maintain the required quality of service. In a production system, Lightbend Console provides the same visibility and monitoring for those managing operations. Traditional simple monitors, like thresholds, can’t keep up with the scaling demands of a truly elastic system.

Typically tools that provide these benefits are cumbersome and tricky to set up. Lightbend console is effectively a monitoring stack “in a box” that offers easy access to application metrics throughout the lifecycle—from development through production. Lightbend Console installs into Kubernetes as a Helm chart.

The Lightbend Console does not provide login functionality. The same Kubernetes mechanisms for access and permission that apply to the cluster also apply to the Console. See the Kubernetes documentation for more information.

The diagram below shows the Console’s runtime architecture:

If you are not familiar with all of the technologies involved in distributed deployment, it will help to have a basic understanding of the following:

• Helm, a package manager for Kubernetes
• kubectl, Kubernetes’ command-line client (the OpenShift oc command provides similar functionality)
• Ingress, a mechanism for exposing services inside the cluster to services outside

The Kubernetes documentation offers a Tutorial that helps you learn the basics in an interactive environment. The Console User Guide also lists a glossary of terms as a reminder.

About this documentation

The following topics describe Lightbend Console. See https://developer.lightbend.com/docs/ for links to all documentation for Lightbend open source and commercial offerings.