Node image

This page describes the node operating system (node OS) image that runs on GKE on VMware cluster nodes.

Beta — Preview

This feature is subject to the "Pre-GA Offerings Terms" in the General Service Terms section of the Service Specific Terms. Pre-GA features are available "as is" and might have limited support. For more information, see the launch stage descriptions.

GKE on VMware cluster nodes run Ubuntu version 18.04 (bionic) by default. The image is similar to Google Kubernetes Engine's Ubuntu node image. Container-Optimized OS is also supported in GKE on VMware node pools as a preview feature.

GKE on VMware offers the following node image options per OS for your cluster:

OS	Node images	Status
Container-Optimized OS		Preview
Ubuntu	Ubuntu Ubuntu with Docker (ubuntu)	General Availability

Supported and Unsupported Features with Container-Optimized OS

Container-Optimized OS does not support the following feature.

• dataplane v2

Kubernetes version

New GKE on VMware versions sometimes introduce a new Kubernetes version for clusters. Version changes are announced in Release notes. To learn which Kubernetes version your cluster runs, see Versions.

Preinstalled tools

• GKE on VMware's node OS has the following tools preinstalled: arping cloud-utils, conntrack, logrotate, prips, systemd-container
• GKE on VMware's node OS has the debug-toolbox container image preinstalled. debug-toolbox includes several packages for debugging node issues. You run an accompanying shell script, toolbox, to unpack and run the debug-toolbox container. Learn about the toolbox script.

Networking

As of GKE on VMware version 1.1.0-gke.6, the node OS' default networking configuration is disabled to support static IP allocation.

Security

See node security.