Creating and managing labels

You can apply user labels to Cloud Dataproc cluster and job resources in order to group resources and related operations for later filtering and listing. You associate labels with resources when the resource is created, at cluster creation or job submission. Once a resource is associated with a label, the label is propagated to operations performed on the resource—cluster create, update, patch, or delete; job submit, update, cancel, or delete—allowing you to filter and list clusters, jobs, and operations by label.

You can also add labels to Compute Engine resources associated with cluster resources, such as Virtual Machine instances and disks.

What are labels?

A label is a key-value pair that helps you organize your Google Cloud Platform Cloud Dataproc clusters and jobs. You can attach a label to each resource, then filter the resources based on their labels. Information about labels is forwarded to the billing system, so you can break down your billing charges by label.

Common uses of labels

We do not recommend creating large numbers of unique labels, such as for timestamps or individual values for every API call. Here are some common use cases for labels:

• Team or cost center labels: Add labels based on team or cost center to distinguish Cloud Dataproc clusters and jobs owned by different teams (for example, team:research and team:analytics). You can use this type of label for cost accounting or budgeting.

• Component labels: For example, component:redis, component:frontend, component:ingest, and component:dashboard.

• Environment or stage labels: For example, environment:production and environment:test.

• State labels: For example, state:active, state:readytodelete, and state:archive.

Note: Do not include sensitive information in labels. This includes information that may be personally identifiable, such as an individual's name or title. Labels are not designed to handle sensitive information.

Requirements for labels

The labels applied to a resource must meet the following requirements:

• Each resource can have multiple labels, up to a maximum of 64.
• Each label must be a key-value pair.
• Keys have a minimum length of 1 character and a maximum length of 63 characters, and cannot be empty. Values can be empty, and have a maximum length of 63 characters.
• Keys and values can contain only lowercase letters, numeric characters, underscores, and dashes. All characters must use UTF-8 encoding, and international characters are allowed.
• The key portion of a label must be unique. However, you can use the same key with multiple resources.
• Keys must start with a lowercase letter or international character.

Creating and using Cloud Dataproc labels

gcloud Command

You can specify one or more labels to be applied to a Cloud Dataproc cluster or job at creation or submit time using the gcloud command-line tool.

gcloud dataproc clusters create args --labels env=prod,customer=acme
gcloud dataproc jobs submit args --labels env=prod,customer=acme

Once a Cloud Dataproc cluster or job has been created, you can update the labels associated with that resource using the gcloud command-line tool.

gcloud dataproc clusters update args --update-labels env=prod,customer=acme
gcloud dataproc jobs update args --update-labels env=prod,customer=acme

Similarly, you can use the gcloud command-line tool to filter Cloud Dataproc resources by label using a filter expression of the following format: labels.<key=value>.

gcloud dataproc clusters list --filter "status.state=ACTIVE AND labels.env=prod"
gcloud dataproc jobs list --filter "status.state=ACTIVE AND labels.customer=acme"

See the clusters.list and jobs.list Cloud Dataproc API documentation for more information on writing a filter expression.

REST API

Labels can be attached to Cloud Dataproc resources through the Cloud Dataproc REST API. The clusters.create, jobs.submit APIs can be used to attach labels to a cluster or job at creation or submit time. The clusters.patch, jobs.patch APIs can be used to edit labels after the resource has been created. Here is the JSON body of a cluster.create request that includes attaches a key1:value label to the cluster.

{
  "clusterName":"cluster-1",
  "projectId":"my-project",
  "config":{
    "configBucket":"",
    "gceClusterConfig":{
      "networkUri":".../networks/default",
      "zoneUri":".../zones/us-central1-f"
    },
    "masterConfig":{
      "numInstances":1,
      "machineTypeUri":"..../machineTypes/n1-standard-4",
      "diskConfig":{
        "bootDiskSizeGb":500,
        "numLocalSsds":0
      }
    },
    "workerConfig":{
      "numInstances":2,
      "machineTypeUri":"...machineTypes/n1-standard-4",
      "diskConfig":{
        "bootDiskSizeGb":500,
        "numLocalSsds":0
      }
    }
  },
  "labels":{
    "key1":"value1"
  }
}

The clusters.list and jobs.list APIs can be used to list resources that match a specified filter, using the following format: labels.<key=value>. Here is a sample Cloud Dataproc API clusters.list HTTPS GET request that specifies a key=value label filter. The caller inserts project, region, a filter label-key and label-value, and an api-key. Note that this sample request is broken into two lines for readability.

GET https://dataproc.googleapis.com/v1/projects/project/regions/region/clusters?
filter=labels.label-key=label-value&key=api-key

See the clusters.list and jobs.list Cloud Dataproc API documentation for more information on writing a filter expression.

If you want to examine the JSON body of a Cloud Dataproc API request or response, an easy way is to construct the request or select the resource to list from the appropriate Cloud Dataproc page of the GCP Console, then click the Equivalent REST button at the bottom of the page.

Console

You can specify a set of labels to be applied to a Cloud Dataproc resource at creation or submit time using the GCP Console. Below is an example of creating a label to associate with a Cloud Dataproc cluster from the Cloud Dataproc→Create a cluster page.

Here is an example of creating a label to associate with a Cloud Dataproc job from the Cloud Dataproc→Submit a job page.

Once a Cloud Dataproc resource has been created, you can update the labels associated with that resource. To update labels, you must first click SHOW INFO PANEL in the top- left of the page. This is an example from the Cloud Dataproc→List clusters page.

Once the info panel is displayed, you can update the labels for your Cloud Dataproc resources. Below is an example of updating labels for a Cloud Dataproc cluster.

It is also possible to update labels for multiple items in one operation. In this example, labels are being updated for multiple Cloud Dataproc jobs at the same time.

Labels allow you to filter the Cloud Dataproc resources shown on the Cloud Dataproc→List clusters and Cloud Dataproc→List jobs pages. In the top of the page, you can use the search pattern labels.<labelname>=<value> to filter resources by a label.

Automatically applied labels

When creating or updating a cluster, Cloud Dataproc automatically applies several labels to the cluster and cluster resources. For example, Cloud Dataproc applies labels to virtual machines, persistent disks, and accelerators when a cluster is created. Automatically applied labels have a special goog-dataproc prefix.

The following goog-dataproc labels are automatically applied to Cloud Dataproc resources. Any values you supply for the reserved goog-dataproc labels at cluster creation will override automatically supplied values. For this reason, supplying your own values for these labels is not recommended.

Label	Description
goog-dataproc-cluster-name	User-specified cluster name
goog-dataproc-cluster-uuid	Unique cluster ID
goog-dataproc-location	Cloud Dataproc regional cluster endpoint

You can use these automatically applied labels in many ways, including:

• Searching and filtering for Cloud Dataproc resources
• Filtering billing data to calculate Cloud Dataproc costs

What's next

• Google Cloud Resource Manager→Using Labels

• Google Compute Engine→Labeling or Tagging Resources