GKE on Bare Metal supports a wide variety of systems, and runs on the hardware that is supported by the target operating system distributions. An GKE on Bare Metal configuration can run on minimal hardware, or on multiple machines to provide flexibility, availability, and performance.
Regardless of your GKE on Bare Metal configuration, your nodes and clusters must have enough CPU, RAM, and storage resources to meet the needs of clusters and the workloads you are running.
Minimum and recommended CPU, RAM, and storage requirements
The following table describes the minimum and recommended hardware requirements for running GKE on Bare Metal.
| Resource | Minimum | Recommended | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPUs / vCPUs | 4 core | 8 core |
GKE on Bare Metal requires a minimum of 2 machines, comprising a single admin cluster and a single workload cluster. Each of the machines require the minimum resources described here. For highly available (HA) nodes and improved performance, we suggest a realistic minimum of 5 Machines, all with the recommended level of resources. |
| RAM | 32 GB | 64 GB | |
| Storage | 128 GB | 256 GB |
See Installation prerequisites overview for detailed storage requirements. See Configuring storage for GKE on Bare Metal for more information. |
Cluster types and additional storage requirements
When you install GKE on Bare Metal, you can create different kinds of clusters:
- An admin cluster creates and controls user clusters to run workloads.
- A standalone cluster is a single cluster than can administer and run workloads on that cluster, but can't create or administer user clusters.
- A hybrid cluster can administer and run workloads, but it can also create and manage additional user clusters.
Despite the fact that these configurations can require somewhat different hardware resources in operation, the minimum and recommended hardware resources are the same for all cluster types.