Configuring hardware for Google Distributed Cloud

Google Distributed Cloud supports a wide variety of systems running on the hardware that the target operating system distributions support. An Google Distributed Cloud configuration can run on minimal hardware, or on multiple machines to provide flexibility, availability, and performance.

Regardless of your Google Distributed Cloud configuration, your nodes and clusters must have enough CPU, RAM, and storage resources to meet the needs of clusters and the workloads that you're running.

When you install Google Distributed Cloud, you can create different types of clusters:

  • A user cluster that runs workloads.
  • An admin cluster that creates and controls user clusters to run workloads.
  • A standalone cluster is a single cluster that can manage and run workloads, but a standalone cluster can't create or manage user clusters.
  • A hybrid cluster can manage and run workloads, and a hybrid cluster can also create and manage additional user clusters.

In addition to cluster type, you can choose from the following installation profiles in terms of resource requirements:

  • Default: The default profile has standard system resource requirements, and you can use it for all cluster types.

  • Edge: The edge profile has significantly reduced system resource requirements. Use of this profile is recommended for edge devices with limited resources. You can only use the edge profile for standalone clusters.

Resource requirements for all cluster types using the default profile

The following table describes the minimum and recommended hardware requirements that Google Distributed Cloud needs to operate and manage admin, hybrid, user, and standalone clusters using the default profile:

Resource Minimum Recommended
CPUs / vCPUs 4 core 8 core
RAM 16 GB 32 GB
Storage 128 GB 256 GB

Resource requirements for standalone clusters using the edge profile

The following table describes the minimum and recommended hardware requirements that Google Distributed Cloud needs to operate and manage standalone clusters using the edge profile:

Resource Minimum Recommended
CPUs / vCPUs 2 core 4 core
RAM Ubuntu: 4 GB
CentOS/RHEL: 6 GB		 Ubuntu: 8 GB
CentOS/RHEL: 12 GB
Storage 128 GB 256 GB

To configure standalone clusters using the edge profile, follow these best practices:

  • Run bmctl on a separate workstation. If you must run bmctl on the target cluster node, you need 2 GB of memory to meet the minimum requirements. For example, you require 6 GB for Ubuntu and 8 GB for CentOS/Redhat.

  • Set MaxPodsPerNode to 110. The cluster runs no more than 30 user pods per node on average. You might need extra resources for a higher MaxPodsPerNode configuration or run more than 30 user pods per node.

  • Use containerd as the container runtime. You might need extra resources to run with the Docker container runtime.

  • Kubevirt components are not considered in this minimum resource configuration. Kubevirt requires additional resources depending on the number of VMs deployed in the cluster.

Number of machines needed

Google Distributed Cloud requires at least one machine, which serves as both workstation and cluster node. For highly available (HA) nodes and improved performance, we suggest a realistic minimum of five machines meeting the recommended resource requirements.

Additional storage requirements

Google Distributed Cloud doesn't provide any storage resources. You must provision and configure the required storage on your system.

For detailed storage requirements, see the Installation prerequisites overview.

For more information about how to configure the storage required, see Configuring storage for Google Distributed Cloud.