Get support

Google's primary support objective is to resolve production incidents as quickly as possible. Understanding your configuration, analyzing logs and metrics, and collaborating with partners helps us to solve incidents quickly.

Google Cloud offers various support packages to accommodate your support needs. All Google Cloud Support packages include support for Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Enterprise edition and Google Distributed Cloud. If you have an existing Google Cloud Support package, then you already have support for GKE Enterprise and Google Distributed Cloud.

For more information, see the Cloud Customer Care documentation.

Requirements for Google Distributed Cloud support

To troubleshoot business-critical incidents effectively:

• Check that your environment is current and within the published end-of-support timeframes. See the Version Support Policy section for more information.
• Enable Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring for system components. For details, see the following Support tools section.

Support tools

To troubleshoot a Google Distributed Cloud incident, Google Cloud Support relies on three pieces of information:

• Your environment configuration
• Logs from your clusters
• Metrics from your clusters

Your environment configuration

When you open a support case, running the following commands provides key information about your cluster setup:

• For all your cluster types, run the bmctl check cluster --snapshot command to capture information about Kubernetes and your nodes. Attach the resulting tar file to the support case.

• For admin, hybrid, and standalone clusters, run the bmctl check cluster command to check the health status of the cluster and nodes. Attach the resulting logs to the support case. They should exist under the bmctl-workspace/[CLUSTER_NAME]/log/check-cluster-[TIMESTAMP] directory.

• For user clusters, first create a health check YAML file with the cluster name and namespace, and then apply the file in the appropriate admin cluster:

  1. Create a YAML file with the following healthcheck properties. Here is sample content for a cluster named user1 in the cluster-user1 namespace:

     apiVersion: baremetal.cluster.gke.io/v1
     kind: HealthCheck
     metadata:
       generateName: healthcheck-
       namespace: cluster-user1
     spec:
       clusterName: user1
     

  2. After you create the YAML file, apply the custom resource in the admin cluster that is managing the user cluster with the kubectl command. Here is a sample command using the YAML file created in the previous step. In the sample, the ADMIN_KUBECONFIG variable specifies the path to the admin cluster's kubeconfig file:

     kubectl --kubeconfig ADMIN_KUBECONFIG create -f healthcheck-user1.yaml
     

     The command returns the following response:

     healthcheck.baremetal.cluster.gke.io/healthcheck-7c4qf created
     

  3. Wait until the health check job is completed by testing to see if the health check job has finished reconciling. In the previous example case, the health check job name is healthcheck.baremetal.cluster.gke.io/healthcheck-7c4qf. Here is a sample test with the kubectl command that waits 30 minutes for the health check job to complete:

     kubectl --kubeconfig ADMIN_KUBECONFIG wait healthcheck healthcheck-7c4qf \
         -n cluster-user1 --for=condition=Reconciling=False --timeout=30m
     

     When completed, this command returns:

     healthcheck.baremetal.cluster.gke.io/healthcheck-7c4qf condition met
     

     You can see the health check job results with the following command:

     kubectl --kubeconfig ADMIN_KUBECONFIG get healthcheck healthcheck-7c4qf \
         -n cluster-user1
     

     The command returns the following result:

     NAME                PASS   AGE
     healthcheck-7c4qf   true   17m
     

  4. Gather all the health check job pod's logs into a local file with the kubectl command. Here's an example using the previous sample health check job:

     kubectl --kubeconfig ADMIN_KUBECONFIG logs -n cluster-user1 \
         -l baremetal.cluster.gke.io/check-name=healthcheck-7c4qf --tail=-1 > \
         healthcheck-7c4qf.log
     

Cluster logs

When you create a new Google Distributed Cloud cluster, Cloud Logging agents are enabled by default and scoped only to system-level components. This replicates system-level logs into the Google Cloud project associated with the cluster. System-level logs are from Kubernetes pods in the following namespaces:

• kube-system
• gke-system
• gke-connect
• istio-system
• config-management-system
• gatekeeper-system
• cnrm-system
• knative-serving

Logs can be queried from the Cloud Logging console.

Note: If Cloud Logging is disabled, support is offered on a best-effort basis only, and could require significant additional effort from your on-site engineering team.

For more details, see Logging and Monitoring.

Google Cloud CLI and remote cluster access

If you open a support case, Cloud Customer Care may ask you for remote read-only access to your clusters to help diagnose and resolve issues more effectively. For the support team to have sufficient access to troubleshoot your cluster issue remotely, ensure that you've installed and updated to the latest version of the Google Cloud CLI. The Google Cloud CLI must be at version 401.0.0 or higher to give Cloud Customer Care the needed permissions. We recommend that you update Google Cloud CLI regularly to pick up added permissions and other enhancements.

To install the latest components of the gcloud CLI, use the gcloud components update command. For more information about giving Cloud Customer Care remote read-only access to your clusters, see Google Cloud Support for your registered clusters.

Cluster metrics

In addition to logs, the Cloud Monitoring agent also captures metrics. This replicates system-level metrics into the Google Cloud project associated with the cluster. System-level metrics are from Kubernetes pods running in the same namespaces listed in Logs.

Note: If Cloud Monitoring is disabled, support is offered on a best-effort basis only, and could require significant additional effort from your on-site engineering team.

For more details, see Logging and Monitoring.

How we troubleshoot your environment

Here is an example of a typical support incident:

1. The cluster administrator opens a support case in Google Cloud console or the Google Cloud Support Center, and selects Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Enterprise edition and Google Distributed Cloud as Category and Component, respectively. They enter the information required and attach the output of relevant bmctl commands to the case.

2. The support case is routed to a Technical Support Engineer specializing in Google Distributed Cloud.

3. The support engineer examines the contents of the snapshot to gain context of the environment.

4. The support engineer examines the logs and metrics in the Google Cloud project, entering the support case ID as the business justification, which is logged internally.

5. The support engineer responds to the case with an assessment and recommendation. The support engineer and the user continue troubleshooting until they come to a resolution.

What does Google support?

Generally, the Cloud Support team supports all software components shipped as part of Google Distributed Cloud and Cloud Service Mesh, Policy Controller, Config Sync, and Config Controller. See the following table for a more complete list of what is and isn't supported:

Google Cloud supported	Not supported
Kubernetes and the container runtime	Customer choice of load balancer (manual load balancing)
Connect and the Connect Agent	Customer code (see Developer Support)
Google Cloud operations, Monitoring, Logging, and agents	Customer choice of operating system
Bundled load balancer	Physical or virtual server, storage, and network
Ingress controller	External DNS, DHCP, and identity systems
GKE Identity Service
Cloud Service Mesh
Policy Controller
Config Sync
Config Controller

Version Support Policy

Support for Google Distributed Cloud follows the GKE Enterprise Support Policy. Google supports each Google Distributed Cloud minor version for the later of:

• 12 months after the initial release of the minor version.
• The release of the third subsequent minor version.

For the most recent minor release dates for GKE Enterprise and the earliest end-of-life dates, see GKE Enterprise support period.

For lists of the supported and unsupported Google Distributed Cloud versions, see Versioning.

For version information related to cluster upgrades, see Version rules for upgrades.

Shared Responsibility Model

Running a business-critical production application on Google Distributed Cloud requires multiple parties to carry different responsponsibilities. While not an exhaustive list, the following sections list the roles and responsibilities.

Google responsibilities

• Maintenance and distribution of the Google Distributed Cloud software package.
• Notifying users of available upgrades for Google Distributed Cloud, and producing upgrade scripts for the previous version; Google Distributed Cloud supports sequential upgrades only (example: 1.2 → 1.3 → 1.4 and not 1.2 → 1.4).
• Operating the Connect and Cloud Operations services.
• Troubleshooting, providing workarounds, and correcting the root cause of any issues related to Google-provided components

User responsibilities

• Overall system administration for on-premises clusters.
• Maintaining any application workload deployed on the cluster.
• Running, maintaining, and patching the data center infrastructure, including networking, servers, operating system, storage, and connectivity to Google Cloud.
• Running, maintaining, and patching network load balancers if manual load balancer option is chosen.
• Upgrading Google Distributed Cloud versions regularly.
• Monitoring of the cluster and applications, and responding to any incidents.
• Ensuring Cloud Operations agents are deployed to clusters.
• Providing Google with environmental details for troubleshooting purposes.

Developer Support

Google doesn't provide support specifically for your application workloads. However, we do provide best-effort developer support to ensure your developers can run applications on Google Distributed Cloud. We believe that engaging earlier during development can prevent critical incidents later in the deployment.

This best-effort Developer Support is available to customers with any paid support package and is treated as a P3 priority for an issue blocking a launch, or a P4 priority for general consultation. In this classification, priority level 0 is the highest priority.