A Complete Guide to OpenShift Web Console Tabs and Features

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The OpenShift Web Console is a powerful, browser-based GUI that allows developers and administrators to manage and monitor OpenShift clusters visually. Whether you're deploying applications or managing infrastructure, the console provides intuitive access to all major OpenShift features.

Let’s explore the key tabs and perspectives in the OpenShift Web Console.

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🔄 Perspectives in OpenShift Web Console

OpenShift offers two main perspectives:

1. Administrator Perspective

Designed for cluster and project administrators, this view provides access to:

• Cluster Overview: View cluster health, capacity, and alerts.
• Workloads: Manage deployments, pods, daemonsets, jobs, and cron jobs.
• Networking: Configure services, routes, ingresses, and network policies.
• Storage: Manage persistent volume claims (PVCs), storage classes, and volumes.
• Operators: Install and manage Operators from the OperatorHub.
• User Management: Manage users, groups, roles, and role bindings.
• Monitoring: Access dashboards, metrics, and alerts.
• Cluster Settings: Manage updates, Operators, CRDs, and more.
• Web Terminal: Launch a terminal session directly in the browser (requires Web Terminal Operator).

2. Developer Perspective

Tailored for application developers, this view includes:

• Topology View: Visualize applications, components, and their relationships.
• Add: Import code, deploy containers, or use templates to create apps.
• Search: Quickly find resources across the project.
• Builds: Monitor build pipelines and triggers.
• Pipelines: View and manage CI/CD pipelines.
• Helm: Deploy and manage Helm charts.
• Monitoring: View metrics and alerts scoped to your project.
• Project Settings: Manage quotas, limits, and access control.

🔧 Note: Starting with OpenShift 4.19, the Developer perspective is not enabled by default. Admins can enable it via the Console Operator settings.

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🧱 Key Tabs and Their Functions

📊 Overview

• Provides a high-level summary of the selected project or the entire cluster.
• Displays resource usage, alerts, and quick links to common actions.

📦 Workloads

• Deployments: Manage rolling updates and scaling.
• Pods: View logs, events, and terminal access.
• DaemonSets, StatefulSets, Jobs: Manage specialized workloads.
• CronJobs: Schedule recurring tasks.

🌐 Networking

• Services: Internal service discovery.
• Routes: External access to services.
• Ingresses: Kubernetes-native routing.
• Network Policies: Control traffic flow between pods.

💾 Storage

• PVCs: Persistent storage for pods.
• Storage Classes: Define dynamic provisioning behavior.
• Volumes: View and manage attached volumes.

🧩 Operators

• Install and manage Kubernetes Operators.
• View Operator-installed CRDs and their instances.

👥 User Management

• Manage users, groups, roles, and bindings.
• Assign RBAC permissions.

📈 Monitoring

• Access Prometheus-based dashboards.
• View metrics, alerts, and logs.
• Run PromQL queries.

⚙️ Cluster Settings

• Manage cluster-wide configurations.
• View and update cluster Operators.
• Configure identity providers and authentication.

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🧪 Bonus: Web Terminal

• Launch a terminal session directly in the browser.
• Useful for quick CLI access without switching tools.
• Requires the Web Terminal Operator to be installed.

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🧰 Enabling Developer Perspective (if disabled)

Run this command as a cluster admin:

oc patch console.operator.openshift.io/cluster --type='merge' -p '{

  "spec": {

    "customization": {

      "perspectives": [

        {

          "id": "dev",

          "visibility": {

            "state": "Enabled"

          }

        }

      ]

    }

  }

}'

How to Download and Use the OpenShift oc CLI on Windows

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If you're working with OpenShift from a Windows machine, the oc CLI (OpenShift Client) is your gateway to managing clusters, deploying applications, and automating tasks. This guide walks you through downloading the oc binary, setting it up on Windows, and connecting to your OpenShift cluster.

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✅ Step 1: Download the oc CLI for Windows

1. Visit the official OpenShift CLI download page: 👉 https://mirror.openshift.com/pub/openshift-v4/clients/ocp/

2. Choose the version that matches your OpenShift cluster (e.g., 4.14.0) and download the Windows archive:

   • File name will look like: openshift-client-windows-4.14.0.zip
     
     or directly download from below
     
     

     https://console.redhat.com/openshift/downloads
     
     

3. Extract the ZIP file to a folder, for example:

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🛠️ Step 2: Add oc to Your System PATH

To use oc from any terminal window:

1. Press Win + S, search for Environment Variables, and open Edit the system environment variables.

2. Click Environment Variables.

3. Under System variables, find and select Path, then click Edit.

4. Click New and add the path to the folder where oc.exe is located: C:\OpenShiftCLI\

5. Click OK to save and close all dialogs.

6. Open a new Command Prompt or PowerShell window and test: oc version

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🔐 Step 3: Log in to Your OpenShift Cluster

You’ll need the OpenShift API URL and a login token or credentials.

Option 1: Login with Token

1. Open the OpenShift Web Console.
2. Click your username (top right) → Copy Login Command.
3. It will show a command like: oc login https://api.your-cluster.example.com:6443 --token=sha256~your-token-here
4. Paste and run this command in your terminal.

Option 2: Login with Username/Password

oc login https://api.your-cluster.example.com:6443 -u your-username -p your-password

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🧪 Step 4: Run OpenShift Commands

Now you're ready to interact with your cluster!

Examples:

oc get nodes

oc get pods -n my-namespace

oc new-project demo-project

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🧼 Optional: Create a Script for Quick Login

You can create a .bat or .ps1 script to automate login:

login-openshift.bat

@echo off

oc login https://api.your-cluster.example.com:6443 --token=sha256~your-token-here

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🎯 Conclusion

With the oc CLI set up on your Windows system, you can now manage OpenShift clusters directly from your terminal. Whether you're deploying apps, managing resources, or automating tasks, the CLI gives you full control.