With Google Kubernetes Engine regional clusters, master nodes are now highly available
Weston Hutchins
Product Manager, Google Kubernetes Engine
We introduced highly available masters for Google Kubernetes Engine earlier this fall with our alpha launch of regional clusters. Today, regional clusters are in beta and ready to use at scale in Kubernetes Engine.
Regional clusters allow you to create a Kubernetes Engine cluster with a multi-master, highly available control plane that helps ensure higher cluster uptime. With regional clusters in Kubernetes Engine, you gain:
- Resilience from single zone failure - Because your masters and nodes are available across a region rather than a single zone, your Kubernetes cluster is still fully functional if a zone goes down.
- No downtime during master upgrades - Kubernetes Engine minimizes downtime during all Kubernetes master upgrades, but with a single master, some downtime is inevitable. By using regional clusters, the control plane remains online and available, even during upgrades.
How regional clusters work
When you create a regional cluster, Kubernetes Engine spreads your masters and nodes across three zones in a region, ensuring that you can experience a zonal failure and still remain online.By default, Kubernetes Engine creates three nodes in each zone (giving you nine total nodes), but you can change the number of nodes in your cluster with the --num-nodes flag.
Creating a Kubernetes Engine regional cluster is simple. Let’s create a regional cluster with two nodes in each zone.
Or you can use the Cloud Console to create a regional cluster:
For a more detailed explanation of the regional clusters feature along with additional flags you can use, check out the documentation.
Kubernetes Engine regional clusters are offered at no additional charge during the beta period. We will announce pricing as part of general availability. Until then, please send any feedback to gke-regional-clusters-feedback@google.com.
