How-to guides

Creating clusters

• Creating a zonal cluster

  Learn how to create a zonal cluster.

• Creating a regional cluster

  Learn how to create a regional cluster to increase availability of the cluster's control plane and workloads during cluster upgrades, automated maintenance, or a zonal disruption.

• Creating an Autopilot cluster

  Learn how to set up an Autopilot cluster, where Google manages the cluster's underlying infrastructure including nodes and node pools.

• Creating a private cluster

  Learn how to set up a private cluster.

• Creating an alpha cluster

  Learn how to create an alpha cluster, a cluster with Kubernetes alpha features enabled in Google Kubernetes Engine.

• Creating a cluster using Windows Server node pools

  Learn how to create a cluster where you can use Windows Server containers.

Administering clusters

• Cluster administration overview

  Learn the basics of administering your GKE clusters.

• Managing clusters

  Learn how to view your clusters, set a default cluster for command-line tools, and change a cluster's zones.

• Understanding cluster resource usage

  Track the usage of cluster resources such as CPU, GPU, memory, network egress, and storage.

• Configuring cluster access for kubectl

  Learn how to configure cluster access for kubectl.

• Manually upgrading a cluster or node pool

  Learn about upgrading the Kubernetes version running on your cluster or its nodes.

• Resizing a cluster

  Learn how to change the number of nodes in your cluster or node pool.

• Autoscaling a cluster

  Learn how to automatically scale a cluster.

• Viewing cluster autoscaler events

  Learn how the cluster autoscaler emits visibility events, and how to view the logged events.

• Deleting a cluster

  Learn how to delete a cluster and clean up your GKE environment.

• Adding and managing node pools

  Learn about adding new node pools and managing existing ones in your clusters.

• Customizing node system configuration

  Learn how to apply advanced configuration options to the `kubelet` and `sysctl` in your node pools.

• Applying updates to existing node pools (preview)

  Learn how how to dynamically update the network tags, node labels and node taints of an existing node pool.

• Using Compute Engine sole-tenant nodes in GKE

  Learn how to use sole-tenant nodes in GKE.

• Consuming reserved zonal resources

  Learn how to reserve Compute Engine instances in a specific zone.

• Using node auto-provisioning

  Learn how to use node auto-provisioning to automatically create and delete node pools.

• Specifying a node image

  Learn how to run a specific node image on your nodes.

• Auto-upgrading nodes

  Learn how to configure your nodes to automatically upgrade to the latest version of Kubernetes.

• Receiving cluster upgrade notifications

  Learn how to receive notifications for cluster upgrades.

• Verifying node upgrades and quota

  Learn how to verify your node upgrades.

• Auto-repairing nodes

  Learn how to automatically repair your nodes.

• Observing your GKE clusters

  Learn how to observe your GKE clusters using monitoring dashboards.

• Configuring maintenance windows and exclusions

  Learn how to use maintenance windows and exclusions to control when automatic maintenance, such as cluster and node auto-upgrades, can and cannot occur on your clusters.

• Creating and managing cluster labels

  Learn how to organize your Google Cloud clusters with cluster labels.

Configuring and expanding clusters

• Running GPUs

  Learn how to run GPUs in your clusters and node pools.

• Choosing a minimum CPU platform

  Learn how to choose a minimum CPU platform for your clusters and nodes.

• Reducing add-on resource usage in smaller clusters

  Learn how to conserve cluster resources in small clusters by fine-tuning cluster add-ons.

• Configuring a custom boot disk

  Learn how to customize a node boot disk.

• Running preemptible VMs

  Learn how to run preemptible VMs in your clusters.

Deploying workloads to clusters

• Overview of deploying workloads on your cluster

  Learn the basics of how to deploy different types of applications, jobs, and other workloads on your cluster.

• Deploying a stateless Linux application

  Learn how to deploy a stateless Linux application on your cluster.

• Deploying a stateless Windows Server application

  Learn how to deploy a stateless Windows Server application.

• Deploying a stateful application

  Learn how to deploy a stateful application on your cluster.

• Deploying an application from Cloud Marketplace

  Learn how to deploy an application from Google Cloud Marketplace to your cluster.

• Running a job

  Learn how to run a finite or batch job on your cluster.

• Running a CronJob (Beta)

  Learn how to run a timed or time-sensitive job on your cluster.

• Scaling an application

  Learn how to scale the number of running replicas of your application, either manually or automatically.

• Configuring horizontal Pod autoscaling

  Learn how to autoscale a Deployment using different types of metrics.

• Configuring vertical Pod autoscaling

  Learn how to automatically update CPU and memory requests for containers.

• Configuring multidimensional Pod autoscaling

  Learn how to combine elements of horizontal and vertical Pod autoscaling.

• Migrating between API versions of VerticalPodAutoscaler

  Learn how to migrate VerticalPodAutoscaler objects from API versions v1beta1 to v1beta2.

• Performing rolling updates

  Learn how to perform rolling upgrades, which can update your running applications without downtime.

• Controlling scheduling with node taints

  Learn how to use the GKE node taints feature to help control where your workloads are scheduled.

• Managing applications with Application Delivery (Beta)

  Use Application Delivery and private Git repositories to manage and deploy applications on GKE.

• Setting up automated deployments

  Learn how to configure automated deployments for your workloads.

Configuring cluster storage

• Creating volumes

  Learn how to create a Deployment where each Pod contains one or more volumes.

• Manually installing a CSI driver

  Learn how to install a Container Storage Interface (CSI) storage driver.

• Using the Compute Engine persistent disk CSI Driver

  Learn how to automatically deploy and manage the Compute Engine persistent disk CSI Driver.

• Using persistent disks with multiple readers

  Learn how to format and mount a disk for multiple readers.

• Using SSD persistent disks

  Learn how to use persistent disks backed by SSDs in your cluster.

• Using preexisting persistent disks as PersistentVolumes

  Learn how to add a preexisting persistent disk to your cluster.

• Provisioning regional persistent disks

  Learn how to dynamically or manually provision regional persistent disks to replicate data between two zones in the same region.

• Using local SSDs

  Learn how to use local SSDs to provide high-performance, ephemeral storage to nodes in your cluster.

• Using volume expansion (Beta)

  Learn how to use volume expansion to increase the size of your volume after its creation.

• Using volume snapshots (Beta)

  Learn how to use volume snapshots to create a copy of your persistent volume.

• Using customer-managed encryption keys

  Learn how to manage encryption for disks using keys in Cloud KMS.

• Accessing Cloud Firestore fileshares

  Learn how to access a Filestore fileshare by creating a persistent volume and persistent volume claim.

Configuring cluster networking

• Creating a routes-based cluster

  Learn how to set up IP ranges for a routes-based cluster.

• Creating a VPC-native cluster

  Learn how to set up IP aliasing on your GKE cluster.

• Setting up intranode visibility

  Learn how to make all Pod-to-Pod communication visible to the Google Cloud network.

• Optimizing IP address allocation

  Learn how to optimize how IP addresses are allocated to nodes by configuring the maximum number of Pods per node.

• Adding Pod IP address ranges (Preview)

  Learn how to use discontiguous multi-Pod CIDR to add Pod IP address ranges to clusters.

• Setting up clusters with Shared VPC

  Learn how to set up GKE clusters that use Shared VPC.

• Creating a cluster network policy

  Learn how to enforce a Kubernetes network policy on your GKE cluster.

• Using Dataplane V2

  Learn how to use Dataplane V2 with your GKE clusters.

• Using network policy logging (Beta)

  Learn how to use network policy logging to record connections allowed and denied by network policies.

• Using an IP masquerade agent

  Learn how to set up an IP masquerade agent on your GKE cluster to allow multiple clients to access a destination using a single IP address.

• Setting up NodeLocal DNSCache

  Learn how to set up local DNS caches on your cluster nodes.

• Configuring TCP/UDP load balancing

  Learn how to configure Services of type LoadBalancer.

• Exposing applications using Services

  Learn how to expose your application to network traffic from outside your cluster.

• Using an internal load balancer

  Learn how to set up an internal load balancer on your GKE cluster.

• Configuring Ingress for external load balancing

  Learn how to configure an external HTTP(S) load balancer by creating an Ingress object.

• Configuring Ingress for internal load balancing

  Learn how to configure an internal HTTP(S) load balancer by creating an Ingress object.

• Container-native load balancing through Ingress

  Learn how to set up container-native load balancing.

• Using Google-managed SSL certificates

  Learn how to use Ingresses to create external load balancers with Google-managed SSL certificates.

• Using multiple SSL certificates in HTTPS load balancing with Ingress

  Learn how to use multiple SSL certificates with your cluster's HTTP(S) load balancer.

• Using HTTP/2 for load balancing with Ingress

  Learn how to configure an HTTP(S) load balancer to use HTTP/2.

• Configuring Ingress features

  Learn about the features available for your Ingress controller and how to configure these features through parameters.

• Container-native load balancing with standalone zonal NEGs

  Learn how to use network endpoint groups independent of Ingress.

• Configuring multi-cluster Services

  Learn how to use multi-cluster Service to discover and invoke Services across multiple GKE clusters.

• Setting up Multi-cluster Ingress

  Create and register the clusters needed to create a multi-cluster Ingress.

• Deploying Ingress across clusters

  Learn how to deploy Ingress across multiple clusters.

• Troubleshooting and operations for Multi-cluster Ingress

  Learn how to troubleshoot problems with the Anthos Ingress controller.

Configuring cluster security

• Hardening your cluster's security

  Follow best practices for hardening your cluster.

• Creating Cloud IAM policies

  Learn how to create Identity and Access Management policies for users and service accounts.

• Using Workload Identity

  Learn how to grant your workloads access to Google Cloud APIs.

• Configuring role-based access control

  Learn how to create roles and grant them access to specific resources in namespaces or clusters.

• Authenticating to the Kubernetes API server

  Learn about the supported authentication methods when connecting to the Kubernetes API server in GKE.

• Using Kubernetes service accounts

  Learn about Kubernetes service accounts and how and when to use them in GKE.

• Migrating from legacy access scopes

  Learn how to migrate your pre-Kubernetes 1.10 clusters from access scopes to IAM for authentication.

• Adding authorized networks for control plane access

  Learn how to set up authorized networks on your GKE cluster.

• Encrypting secrets at the application layer

  Learn how to encrypt Kubernetes Secrets at the application level.

• Using customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK)

  Learn how to manage encryption for disks using keys in Cloud KMS.

• Rotating your control plane IP

  Learn how to rotate the IP address for your cluster's API server.

• Rotating your cluster credentials

  Learn how to rotate the credentials for your cluster's API server.

• Accessing audit logs

  Learn how to use Kubernetes audit logging in your cluster.

• Enabling Linux auditd logs on GKE nodes

  Learn how to enable verbose operating system audit logs.

• Applying Pod security policies using Gatekeeper

  Learn the recommended way to apply Pod-level security controls to your clusters.

• Using PodSecurityPolicies (Beta)

  Learn how to use PodSecurityPolicies to restrict the capabilities of Pods in your clusters.

• Harden workload isolation with GKE Sandbox

  Learn how to protect the host kernel on your cluster's nodes.

• Protecting cluster metadata

  Learn how to protect instance metadata on your cluster's nodes.

• Using Shielded GKE Nodes

  Learn how to run your cluster nodes on Shielded VMs.

• Using Confidential GKE Nodes (Beta)

  Learn how to enable encryption-in-use for your workloads.

• Mitigating security incidents

  Learn actions you can take to mitigate potential ongoing security incidents.

Using Config Connector for Kubernetes

• Config Connector overview

  Learn how to manage Google Cloud resources using Kubernetes tooling and APIs.

• Installing, upgrading, and uninstalling Config Connector

  Learn how to install Config Connector on your cluster.

• Getting started with Config Connector

  Learn how to enable the Cloud Storage API and create and manage Cloud Storage buckets.

Using Config Sync

• Managing clusters with Config Sync

  Learn how to manage single clusters, multi-tenant clusters, and multi-cluster Kubernetes deployments using configs.