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 Windows Server nodes to automatically join an AD domain

  Learn how to configure your Windows Server nodes in your GKE cluster to automatically join an Active Directory domain.

Configuring and expanding clusters

• Running GPUs

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

• Running multi-instance GPUs

  Learn how to partition a GPU to share across containers.

• 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

  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 the Filestore CSI driver

  Learn how to automatically deploy and manage the Filestore 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

  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 Filestore fileshares

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

• Using SMB CSI driver to access SMB volume on Windows Server nodes

  Learn how to use the open source SMB CSI Driver for Kubernetes to access a NetApp Cloud Volumes Service SMB volume on a GKE cluster with Windows server nodes.

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

  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 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

  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.

• Using Google Virtual NIC

  Learn how to enable Google Virtual NIC in a cluster.

• Using Cloud DNS for GKE (Preview)

  Learn how to use Cloud DNS for GKE.

• Using kube-dns

  Learn how GKE implements service discovery using kube-dns.

• Setting up NodeLocal DNSCache

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

• Setting up a custom kube-dns Deployment

  Learn how to set up a custom Deployment of kube-dns.

• 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.

• Deploying Gateways (Preview)

  Learn how to use the Gateway API to configure load balancing and routing.

• GatewayClass capabilities (Preview)

  Learn capabilities of the GatewayClasses provided by GKE.

• 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.

• Enabling multi-cluster Gateways (Preview)

  Learn how to enable your environment for multi-cluster load balancing.

• Deploying multi-cluster Gateways (Preview)

  Learn how to route and shift traffic to applications 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.

• Authenticating with Identity Service for GKE (Preview)

  Learn how to configure an external identity provider for cluster authentication.

• 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.

• Enabling and configuring OS Login in GKE

  Learn how to enable OS Login and configure an organization policy to enforce OS Login for private GKE clusters and 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.