Tech Blog by vCluster Press and Media Resources

Day 7: The vCluster Platform UI: Managing vind Clusters Visually

Mar 14, 2026

min Read

Day 7: The vCluster Platform UI: Managing vind Clusters Visually

All week we’ve been working with the CLI. And honestly, for daily dev work, the CLI is great. But there’s a whole other side to vind that we haven’t touched yet, the vCluster Platform UI.

This is the piece that takes vind from “a better KinD” to something that feels like a real cluster management platform. You get a web dashboard where you can see all your clusters, their status, manage users and teams, deploy apps from a catalog, use templates, and more.

KinD has nothing like this. Let me show you what it looks like.

Starting the Platform

Command:

$ vcluster platform start

Output:

info Starting vCluster platform in Docker... info Welcome to vCluster platform! info Starting vCluster platform... ########################## LOGIN ############################ Username: admin Password: e4bdab61de57d89d2cc05fe574855c86746af56a333e6769321d26f20c36dbc3 Login via UI: https://25turjei.loft.host Login via CLI: vcluster platform login https://25turjei.loft.host ################################################################# vCluster Platform was successfully installed and can now be reached at: https://25turjei.loft.host

The platform runs as a Docker container alongside your vind clusters. It gives you a unique URL with auto-generated credentials. Open that URL in your browser and you’re in.

Important: Start the platform before creating your clusters. Clusters created after vcluster platform start are automatically registered in the platform. Clusters created before the platform was running won’t appear in the UI.

What You See When You Log In

Cluster Overview

A visual list of all your vind clusters with real-time status:

Command:

$ vcluster platform list vclusters

Output:

You can click into any cluster to see its details, connect to it, or manage it.

Projects

Projects are how you organize clusters. By default, there’s a default project, but you can create more:

$ vcluster platform list projects

PROJECT ----------- default

In the UI, projects let you: - Group related clusters together (e.g., development, staging, production) - Set access policies per project - Define which clusters are allowed in each project - Assign team members to specific projects

Teams and Users

Command:

$ vcluster platform get current-user

Output:

The platform supports:-

Users: individual accounts with their own access keys
Teams: groups of users (e.g., “Global Admins”)
Role-based access: control who can create, delete, or connect to clusters
SSO integration: connect to your existing identity provider

Seeing the vind cluster

You can see the resources of the cluster and access them via the UI and create resources on the cluster via the UI as well.

Platform-Aware Cluster Lifecycle

When the platform is running, cluster operations are automatically tracked:

Creating a cluster:

Command:

$ vcluster create blog-demo

Output:

info Will connect vCluster blog-demo to platform... info Starting vCluster standalone blog-demo done Successfully created virtual cluster blog-demo

Notice the line: “Will connect vCluster blog-demo to platform…” : the cluster is automatically registered.

Deleting a cluster:

Command:

$ vcluster delete blog-demo

Output:

info Removing vCluster container vcluster.cp.blog-demo... info Delete virtual cluster instance p-default/blog-demo in platform done Successfully deleted virtual cluster blog-demo

Notice: “Delete virtual cluster instance p-default/blog-demo in platform”, it automatically deregisters. No orphaned entries in the dashboard.

Access Keys for Automation

The platform supports access keys for programmatic access:

# Login with access key

$ vcluster platform login https://25punio.loft.host --access-key <your-key> done Successfully logged into vCluster Platform instance https://25punio.loft.host

# Now all platform commands work

$ vcluster platform list vclusters $ vcluster platform list projects

This is useful for: - CI/CD pipelines that need to interact with the platform - Scripts that manage clusters automatically - Team members who need CLI access without browser login

That’s a Wrap!

Seven days of vind: from installation to multi-node clusters, external cloud nodes, CI/CD pipelines, advanced features, and now the Platform UI.

Here’s what I hope you take away:

vind is KinD’s successor. Same simplicity, way more features.
Sleep/wake saves real time. Stop deleting and recreating clusters.
External nodes unlock hybrid dev. Your laptop + cloud GPUs in one cluster.
CI/CD is a one-line swap. setup-kind → setup-vind, done.
The Platform UI ties it all together. Visual management, templates, app catalog, team access.

If you’re still running KinD, give vind a try. Three commands to get started:

brew install loft-sh/tap/vcluster vcluster use driver docker vcluster create my-cluster

Happy clustering!

The complete “7 Days of Vind” series: