GKE Enterprise deployment options

This page shows the Google Cloud and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Enterprise edition features that are available on each of the following GKE Enterprise supported environments:

This page is for Operators who define IT solutions and system architecture in accordance with company strategy in coordination with key stakeholders. To learn more about common roles and example tasks that we reference in Google Cloud content, see Common GKE Enterprise user roles and tasks.

Enabling GKE Enterprise

Follow the instructions in Enable GKE Enterprise to enable the Anthos API on your fleet host project. Enabling GKE Enterprise lets you register clusters to your fleet and use all the following GKE Enterprise features without incurring additional charges:

See the GKE pricing page for more information about enterprise tier pricing. GKE Enterprise charges are applied per managed vCPU. For standard mode GKE on Google Cloud clusters, there are no separate GKE charges. For Autopilot clusters, billing uses the Autopilot pricing model in addition to GKE Enterprise per-vCPU charges.

Pricing options for GKE on Google Cloud

If you only want to use GKE on Google Cloud, you have the following options for enterprise and multi-cluster features:

  • You can choose to enable GKE Enterprise to have access to all GKE Enterprise features for a single per-vCPU charge, as described above.

  • You can choose to not enable GKE Enterprise and pay only for the enterprise features you use, in addition to the GKE charges. Only a subset of GKE Enterprise features are available to purchase separately. See the following feature pricing guides for detailed information.

    See the GKE pricing page for information for GKE pricing at the standard tier. These GKE charges include the use of the following enterprise and multi-cluster features at no additional cost:

Features available on GKE clusters on Google Cloud

GKE on Google Cloud is the most mature GKE Enterprise environment, with support for all enterprise features. For a list of key features and the benefits of running workloads on GKE, see the GKE product overview.

A small number of GKE Enterprise features aren't supported on Autopilot clusters, as shown in the following table:

Feature Available on GKE standard clusters Available on Autopilot clusters
Config Sync
Policy Controller
Config Controller
Cloud Service Mesh in-cluster
Managed Cloud Service Mesh
Knative serving
Migrate to Containers
GKE Identity Service
Binary Authorization
Multi Cluster Ingress
Multi-network support for Pods
Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring for GKE Enterprise system components
Advanced security posture and compliance monitoring
Node to node encryption
FQDN network policies

Features available on clusters outside of Google Cloud

The following tables show which key Google Cloud and GKE Enterprise features are available on clusters outside of Google Cloud.

For details about which versions of the GKE Enterprise features are supported on each environment, see the version support matrix.

Plugins and load balancers

GKE Enterprise clusters outside of Google Cloud use a combination of built-in GKE Enterprise capabilities along with platform-native capabilities.

Feature GDC (VMware) GDC (bare metal) GKE on AWS GKE on Azure Attached clusters GDC (connected)
Network plugin
Container storage interface (CSI) & hybrid storage
Bundled L4 load balancer
Platform-native load balancers N/A N/A N/A

Operations and management

Feature GDC (VMware) GDC (bare metal) GKE on AWS GKE on Azure Attached clusters GDC (connected)
GKE Enterprise dashboard in the Google Cloud console
Connect Gateway
Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring
Prometheus/Grafana

Security and Identity

Feature GDC (VMware) GDC (bare metal) GKE on AWS GKE on Azure Attached clusters GDC (connected)
GKE Identity Service
Fleet workload identity
Cloud Audit Logs
Binary Authorization

Service management

Feature GDC (VMware) GDC (bare metal) GKE on AWS GKE on Azure Attached clusters GDC (connected)
Cloud Service Mesh in-cluster *
Managed Cloud Service Mesh
Service dashboards in the Google Cloud console *
Cloud Service Mesh certificate authority
Cloud Service Mesh integration with Certificate Authority Service

* For the list of attached clusters that Cloud Service Mesh supports, see Supported platforms.

Configuration management

Feature GDC (VMware) GDC (bare metal) GKE on AWS GKE on Azure Attached clusters GDC (connected)
Policy Controller *
Config Sync
Config Controller

* To install Policy Controller, AKS clusters must not have the Azure Policy add-on.

Application deployment

Feature GDC (VMware) GDC (bare metal) GKE on AWS GKE on Azure Attached clusters GDC (connected)
Knative serving
Google Cloud Marketplace

Application migration

Feature GDC (VMware) GDC (bare metal) GKE on AWS GKE on Azure Attached clusters GDC (connected)
Migrate to Containers

VM management

Feature GDC (VMware) GDC (bare metal) GKE on AWS GKE on Azure Attached clusters GDC (connected)
VM Runtime on Google Distributed Cloud

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