GKE in the Google Cloud console

This page provides an overview of the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) pages available in the Google Cloud console for both administrators and developers.

Before reading this page you should be familiar with the following, as well as basic Kubernetes concepts:

Overview

The Google Cloud console offers multiple pages that help you manage your project's GKE clusters and their resources. You can use these pages to create, view, inspect, manage, and delete GKE resources. You can also create Kubernetes Deployments for stateless applications directly from the Workloads page.

In conjunction with the gcloud and kubectl command-line tools, the GKE pages in the Google Cloud console are helpful for DevOps workflows, troubleshooting issues, quick prototyping, and when working with multiple GKE clusters or Google Cloud projects. Rather than using the command-line to query clusters for information about their resources, you can use these pages to get information about all resources in every cluster quickly and easily.

Required roles

If you are not a project owner, you must have the following Identity and Access Management (IAM) role at minimum to view clusters in the Google Cloud console:

  • Kubernetes Engine Viewer (roles/container.viewer): This role lets users view the GKE Clusters page and other container resources in the Google Cloud console. For details about the permissions included in this role, or to grant a role with read or write permissions, see Kubernetes Engine roles in the IAM documentation.

If your organization has clusters outside Google Cloud, you need additional permissions to view and sign in to these clusters and their resources.

GKE console pages

The following sections discuss each console page and its features.

GKE Enterprise overview

If you've enabled GKE Enterprise, the GKE Enterprise overview provides a "big picture" overview of your fleet, including any security concerns, estimated fleet costs, your fleet-wide Policy Controller coverage, and the synchronization status of your Config Sync packages. It also gives a fleet-level view of your resource utilization that you can use to help optimize spending, application design, and resource allocation.

To learn more, see the Use the GKE Enterprise overview.

Kubernetes clusters

Kubernetes clusters shows every Kubernetes cluster you have created in your project. You can use this page to create new clusters, inspect details about clusters, make changes to their settings, connect to them using Cloud Shell, and delete them.

If you have registered a cluster to a fleet, the cluster's fleet is displayed in the Fleet column in the cluster list. You can learn more about viewing fleet status in the Google Cloud console in Get fleet membership status.

Each cluster has an Actions menu that lets you quickly perform common operations. To use this, click Actions next to the cluster in the cluster list. From this menu, you can:

  • Click Edit to make changes to the cluster's settings in its details page.
  • Click Connect to connect to the cluster from the command line with kubectl, or to open the Workloads page.
  • Click Delete to delete the cluster.
  • Click Register or Unregister to update the cluster's fleet membership.

Clusters outside Google Cloud also have an option to authenticate to the cluster using your chosen identity provider.

You can also click the Utilization, Observability, and Cost optimization tabs to view the following information:

  • Utilization: If you've enabled GKE Enterprise, view a list of all clusters and sort them by CPU, memory, or disk utilization. This lets you quickly see which specific clusters are the biggest users of their resources. You can also view how many container restarts and error logs your cluster has. To learn more, see Fleet resource utilization metrics.
  • Observability: View infrastructure health metrics for your GKE clusters and workloads. To learn more, see Observability for GKE.
  • Cost optimization: View cluster-level metrics that describe how effectively your GKE clusters and workloads are utilizing the Compute Engine resources you pay for. To learn more, see View cost-related optimization metrics.

Cluster details

In the Clusters page, you can select a cluster to view its details page, which includes the following tab views:

  • Details displays the current settings for the cluster and its node pool. Settings with an edit button are editable unless the edit button has been disabled. Settings that can't be edited under any circumstances show a lock icon. You can learn more about cluster settings in Cluster configuration. You can also request a cluster upgrade from this page: when a new upgrade is available, an Upgrade Available notification is displayed.

  • Nodes (Standard clusters only) lists all of the cluster's nodes and their requested CPU, memory, and storage resources.

  • Storage displays the persistent volumes and storage classes provisioned for the cluster's nodes.

  • Observability displays cluster metrics.

  • Logs displays cluster and autoscaler logs.

  • App errors displays recent application errors from the cluster.

Workloads

The Workloads page lists all your running workloads. You can use this page to inspect, manage, edit, and delete workloads deployed to your clusters.

You can use the filter search option at the top of the workload list to list only specific workloads. By default, Kubernetes system objects are filtered out.

If a workload is running on a fleet member cluster, its fleet is displayed in the Fleet column. You can learn more about fleet information in the Google Cloud console in Get fleet membership status.

You can also deploy stateless applications directly from the Workloads page by clicking Deploy. For more information, refer to Deploying a stateless application.

Workload details

If you select a workload from the list, you can view its details page, which includes several tab views:

  • Overview displays high level details about the workload, including its resource utilization, the number of Pod replicas, active revisions, and container details. The Managed pods list in this view lists the Pods that are managed by the workload. You can select a Pod from the list to view that Pod's details, events, logs, and YAML configuration file.
  • Details displays the current settings for the workload, including labels and selectors, annotations, update strategy, autoscaling settings, and Pod specifications. You can configure autoscaling for Deployments from this view.
  • Observability displays workload metrics.
  • Revision history lists each revision of the workload, including the active revision.
  • Events lists human-readable messages for each event affecting the workload.
  • YAML displays the workload's live configuration. You can use the YAML-based text editor provided in this menu to make changes to the workload. You can also copy and download the configuration from this menu.

These items might appear differently depending on the type of workload you're viewing.

Some workloads have an Actions menu on their details page with convenient buttons for performing common operations. For example, you can autoscale, expose, update, and scale a Deployment from its Actions menu.

Services

Services displays the load-balancing Service and traffic-routing Ingress objects associated with your project. It also displays the default Kubernetes system objects associated with networking, such as the Kubernetes API server, HTTP backend, and DNS.

You can select a resource from the list to view a page about that resource, which includes several tab views:

  • Details displays information about the resource, including its usage metrics, IP, and ports.
  • Events lists human-readable messages for each event affecting the resource.
  • YAML displays the resource's live configuration. You can use the YAML-based text editor provided in this menu to make changes to the resource. You can also copy and download the configuration from this menu.

Secrets & ConfigMaps

Secrets & ConfigMaps displays configuration files, Secret objects, ConfigMap objects, environment variables, and other configuration resources associated with your project. It also displays Kubernetes system-level configuration resources, such as tokens used by service accounts.

You can select a resource from this page to view a detailed page about that resource. Sensitive data stored in Secret objects are not displayed in the console.

Storage

Storage lists the storage resources provisioned for your clusters. When you create a PersistentVolumeClaim or StorageClass resource to be used by a cluster's nodes, those resources appear in this page.

This page has the following tab views:

  • Persistent volume claims list all PersistentVolumeClaim resources in your clusters. You use PersistentVolumeClaim resources with StatefulSet workloads to have those workloads claim storage space on a persistent disk in the cluster.
  • Storage classes list all StorageClass resources associated with your nodes. You use StorageClass resources as "blueprints" for using space on a disk: you specify the disk's provisioner, parameters (such as disk type and compute zone), and reclaim policy. You also use StorageClass resources for dynamic volume provisioning, which allow you to create storage volumes on demand.

You can select a resource from these dashboards to view a detailed page for that resource.

Object Browser

Object Browser lists all of the objects running in all of the clusters in your current project. You can list and filter resources by specific API groups and Resource Kinds. You can also preview YAML file for any resource by navigating to its details page.

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