Manage fleet-level features

Fleets let you manage enterprise and other fleet-enabled features across multiple clusters at the same time. This lets you, for example, apply a common set of policies or create a single-service mesh across your fleet of clusters. This page provides an overview of how you can manage features for your fleet. For more information about configuring and using individual features, see their documentation.

If you've enabled Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Enterprise edition, you can manage features in the Google Cloud console. All fleet users can manage features using the command line.

Some features let you create fleet-level default feature configuration for your fleet clusters. For example, you can ensure that every cluster you create in your fleet has Policy Controller installed and configured. Fleet-level default configuration is available only for users who have enabled GKE Enterprise.

You can learn more about how fleet-level feature management on your clusters works "under the hood" in the Feature authorization section.

Fleet-level features

You can manage the following features at fleet level:

Managed Cloud Service Mesh
Security posture
Config Sync
Policy Controller
GKE Identity Service
Multi Cluster Ingress
Multi-cluster Services (GKE clusters only)
Continuous validation for Binary Authorization

This list does not include all features that use or require fleets. For example, fleet Workload Identity Federation relies on clusters being members of a fleet but does not require configuration at fleet level, and Cloud Service Mesh requires fleet membership for all control plane and setup options.

If you have enabled GKE Enterprise, you can use all of these features without incurring additional charges. If you're using the GKE standard tier, you can pay for and use a subset of these features separately. You can find out more about which features are available in which environments in the Deployment options page.

Set up fleet-level features

The following sections describe how you can enable and configure fleet-level features.

To use a fleet-level feature, in most cases you enable the feature for your fleet and configure it for your fleet members. Some configuration (or other additional setup) is generally required to actually use the feature with your clusters and workloads.

If you have enabled GKE Enterprise, you can create fleet-default cluster configurations for some features, meaning that any new enterprise-tier clusters you create in your fleet will be created with your specified settings for that feature already configured. For other features, or if you are not using the enterprise tier, you must configure the feature on each individual cluster.

Enable features with fleet-level defaults

With GKE Enterprise, you can create fleet-level default settings for your GKE clusters for some features. After creating these settings, any GKE cluster that you enroll in the enterprise tier and register during cluster creation is automatically configured with your fleet-level configurations. So, for example, if you set up defaults for Policy Controller, each new cluster you create in your fleet will have your specified version of Policy Controller installed, with your specified policy bundles and other settings. Fleet default settings are not automatically applied to existing fleet member clusters, although you can sync existing clusters to your default settings by using the Google Cloud console.

The general process for enabling features with fleet-level defaults is as follows:

Console

In your fleet host project, go to the Feature Manager page:

Go to Feature Manager

The features that support configuring fleet-level defaults using the Google Cloud console are listed under Fleet-level Feature Management.
For your chosen feature, click Configure and follow the instructions to enable and configure defaults for the feature.
Optional: Select and sync existing clusters in your fleet to your new settings.

gcloud

Create a YAML file specifying your chosen fleet defaults for the feature.
Run the enable command for the feature, passing it your configuration file. Each fleet-level feature has its own enable command. For example, to enable Cloud Service Mesh for your fleet with the default configuration specified in mesh.yaml, run the following command in your fleet host project:
```
gcloud container fleet mesh enable --fleet-default-member-config mesh.yaml
```

Alternatively, for some features you can specify fleet defaults using parameters to the fleet create or fleet update command. See the guide for your chosen feature for more details.

Terraform

Define a google_gke_hub_feature resource with a fleet_default_member_config block that specifies your chosen fleet defaults. For details and supported fleet features, see the Terraform documentation.

Not all features support fleet default configuration using all of these options. For detailed instructions on how to set up fleet defaults for each supported feature, see the following documentation:

Cloud Service Mesh
Config Sync
Policy Controller
Security posture
GKE Identity Service (command line only)
Continuous validation for Binary Authorization (preview, command line only)

Enable and configure fleet features on individual clusters

As an alternative to fleet default configuration, you can choose to configure fleet features separately on individual clusters. This might be a good option if:

You don't have GKE Enterprise enabled.
You want to configure an existing cluster to use a feature.
You want to use services where fleet default configuration is not available, or not available using your chosen tool.

Enable features

Note that this step is not required for all features. See the guide for your chosen feature for more details.

Console

If you have enabled GKE Enterprise, you can enable features from the Feature Manager page in the Google Cloud console.

To enable a feature for your fleet:

In your fleet host project, go to the Feature Manager page:

Go to Feature Manager

Features that can be enabled but not configured from this page are listed under Manage other enterprise-ready features.
Click Enable in the panel for the feature you want to enable.
Click the Enable... button in the details panel that displays.

gcloud

Each fleet-level feature has its own enable command. For example, to enable GKE Identity Service for your fleet, you run the following command in your fleet host project:

gcloud container fleet identity-service enable

See the Google Cloud SDK reference documentation (and its beta and alpha equivalents) for a complete list of commands, or the individual feature documentation sets for more details.

To learn how to check if a feature has already been enabled and view other feature status, see View fleet feature status.

Configure individual clusters

The configuration steps you follow depend on the feature. See the following guides for more information:

View fleet feature status

If you have enabled GKE Enterprise, the easiest way to view fleet feature status is by using the Feature Manager dashboard in the Google Cloud console.

Go to Feature Manager

For supported features, this page displays how many of your fleet clusters have the following status:

Have this feature enabled
Have this feature enabled successfully
Have a warning for this feature
Have an error for this feature

You can also see whether fleet default settings have been configured for the feature, and how many fleet member clusters have these settings. For enabled features, you can click through to a detail page that lists the clusters using the feature, and, if configured, lets you select and sync clusters to your fleet default settings.

For features that can't be configured using this page (listed under Manage other enterprise-ready features), you can see whether the feature has been enabled for your fleet, and view a details panel that shows how many clusters have the feature installed and other relevant information.

View feature status using gcloud

gcloud

Run the following command to list all enabled features:

gcloud container fleet features list

Disable a fleet-level feature

To disable a feature at fleet level, do the following in your fleet host project.

Console

Only the fleet features listed under Manage other enterprise-ready features can be disabled from the Google Cloud console.

In your fleet host project, go to the Feature Manager page:

Go to Feature Manager
Click Details in the panel for the feature you want to disable.
Click the Disable... button in the details panel that displays.

gcloud

Each fleet-level feature has its own disable command. For example, to disable Cloud Service Mesh for your fleet, run the following command in your fleet host project:

gcloud container fleet mesh disable

See the Google Cloud SDK reference documentation (and its beta and alpha equivalents) for a complete list of commands, or the individual feature documentation sets for more details.

For expected behavior after you disable a feature for your fleet, see the relevant feature documentation. In many cases, the relevant configuration still exists on your cluster but you are no longer able to centrally manage the feature using fleet commands or the Google Cloud console.

Feature authorization

In order to manage features at fleet-level, they must be authorized through role-based access control to perform their functions on clusters. Google Cloud uses a service called Feature Authorizer that automatically sets and updates permissions for fleet-enabled features, which saves you from having to set feature permissions manually on every cluster, especially when Google releases feature updates.

When you register a cluster, the manifest applied to the cluster contains a ClusterRoleBinding that gives the Feature Authorizer a cluster-admin role on the cluster, and the role is attached to a service account named service-project-number@gcp-sa-gkehub.iam.gserviceaccount.com.

When you disable a fleet-enabled feature in your project, Feature Authorizer deletes the corresponding ClusterRole and ClusterRoleBinding for the feature, which removes the feature's ability to operate on the cluster.

View Feature Authorizer in audit logs

To view Feature Authorizer activity in GKE audit logs:

Open Logs Explorer in the Google Cloud console.

Go to the Logs page

Run the following advanced query:

resource.type="k8s_cluster"
resource.labels.cluster_name="CLUSTER_NAME"
resource.labels.location="CLUSTER_LOCATION"
protoPayload.authenticationInfo.principalEmail="system:serviceaccount:gke-connect:connect-agent-sa"
protoPayload.authenticationInfo.authoritySelector="service-PROJECT_NUMBER@gcp-sa-gkehub.iam.gserviceaccount.com"

Replace the following:

CLUSTER_NAME: the name of the cluster that you want to view the logs for.
CLUSTER_LOCATION: the Google Cloud location that the cluster was created in.
PROJECT_NUMBER: the Google Cloud project number for the project that owns the cluster.

For non-GKE clusters, find out where the Kubernetes audit logs are stored, and run a similar query.