GKE on-prem is hybrid cloud software that brings Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) to on-premises data centers. With GKE on-prem, you can create, manage, and upgrade Kubernetes clusters in your on-premises environment.
With Connect, you can view and sign in to your on-premises and on-cloud Kubernetes clusters from the same interface in the Google Cloud console.
GKE on-prem runs in your data center in a vSphere 6.5 or 6.7 Update 3 environment. vSphere is VMware's server virtualization software. GKE on-prem uses VMware's vCenter Server to manage your clusters.
Getting GKE on-prem
GKE on-prem is a core component of GKE Enterprise.
Installing GKE on-prem
Before you install GKE on-prem, you create an admin workstation virtual machine (VM) instance in your vSphere environment. You then use the admin workstation to install GKE on-prem.
Architecture
GKE on-prem includes an admin cluster and one or more user clusters, as well as an admin workstation VM. All of these VMs run in a single vSphere cluster.
Admin cluster
The admin cluster is the base layer of GKE on-prem. It runs the following GKE on-prem components:
Admin cluster control plane. The admin cluster's control plane includes the Kubernetes API server, the scheduler, and several controllers for the admin cluster.
User cluster control planes. For each user cluster, the admin cluster has a node that runs the control plane for the user cluster. The control plane includes the Kubernetes API server, the scheduler, and several controllers for the user cluster.
Add-ons. The admin cluster runs several Kubernetes add-ons, like Grafana, Prometheus, and Google Cloud Observability. GKE on-prem launches add-ons on different admin cluster nodes than other control plane components.
Note that user control planes are managed by the admin cluster. They run on nodes in the admin cluster, not in the user clusters. In addition, nodes in the admin cluster run GKE on-prem components. User workloads do not run in the admin cluster.
User cluster
User clusters are where you deploy and run your containerized workloads and services.
Versioning
To learn about GKE on-prem versions, see Version history.
Additional GKE Enterprise components
With GKE on-prem, you can also use the following GKE Enterprise components: