Quick Start

This quick start guide will walk you through installing and starting Lenses using Docker, followed by connecting Lenses to your Kafka cluster.

We are no longer issuing Box licenses for Lenses 5. You can get the same functionality from the new Lenses 6 version.

Locally on your laptop

For a local quick start, you can use Lenses Box, an all-in-one docker, with Lenses, Kafka, Schema Registry and more. Lenses will start and be configured to connect to the built-in Kafka brokers.

1. To start with the Box you need a license. Please contact us.

2. Install and run the Docker

docker run --rm \
    -p 3030:3030 \
    --name=dev \
    --net=host \
    -e EULA="https://dl.lenses.stream/d/?id=CHECK_YOUR_EMAIL_FOR_KEY" \
    lensesio/box   

Open Lenses in your browser, log in with admin/admin.

For more information see here.

If you want to deploy via Helm see here.

Against your environment

For production and automated deployments see Installation.

Lenses starts in a bootstrap mode, this allows you to be guided through adding the minimum requirements for Lenses to start, a license, and connection details to Kafka.

Prerequisites

1. Valid license - Lenses is a licensed product.

2. Kafka versions - Any version of Apache Kafka (2.0 or newer) on-premise and on-cloud.

3. Network connectivity - Lenses needs access to your Kafka brokers

Start Lenses

Run the following command to pull the latest Lenses image and run it:

docker run --name lenses \
  -e LENSES_PORT=3030\
  -e LENSES_SECURITY_USER=admin \
  -e LENSES_SECURITY_PASSWORD=sha256:8c6976e5b5410415bde908bd4dee15dfb167a9c873fc4bb8a81f6f2ab448a918 \
  -p 3030:3030\
  -p 9102:9102 \
  lensesio/lenses:latest

Once Lenses has started, open Lenses in your browser, log in with admin/admin. You will be presented with the bootstrap UI that will guide you through connecting to Kafka.

The connection to your Kafka depends on your Kafka distribution, you can view more details in the Connection to Environment section.