Configuring a Cloud cluster for Windows VMs

This topic describes how to set up a Google Kubernetes Engine cluster in Google Cloud as a processing cluster for migrating Windows VMs. You'll use the processing cluster to generate migrated container artifacts, operate and monitor the migration.

Before you begin

Before creating a processing cluster, you'll need:

A user with GKE Administrator privileges. These privileges are only necessary for the setup portion.
Prerequisites for migration. See Prerequisites for migrating Windows VMs on Cloud for more.

Note: You will need to use the same VPC for your Migrate for Compute Engine infrastructure and your GKE clusters.
Configured your environment as described in Enabling Google services and configuring service accounts.

Set your project defaults

Before you start, make sure you have performed the following tasks:

Ensure that you have enabled the Google Kubernetes Engine API.

Enable Google Kubernetes Engine API

Ensure that you have installed the Cloud SDK.

Set up default gcloud settings using one of the following methods:

Using gcloud init, if you want to be walked through setting defaults.
Using gcloud config, to individually set your project ID, zone, and region.

Using gcloud init

If you receive the error One of [--zone, --region] must be supplied: Please specify location, complete this section.

Run gcloud init and follow the directions:
```
gcloud init
```
If you are using SSH on a remote server, use the --console-only flag to prevent the command from launching a browser:
```
gcloud init --console-only
```
Follow the instructions to authorize gcloud to use your Google Cloud account.
Create a new configuration or select an existing one.
Choose a Google Cloud project.
Choose a default Compute Engine zone.

Note: You can override these default settings in gcloud commands using the --project, --zone, and --region flags.

Using gcloud config

Set your default project ID:
```
gcloud config set project project-id
```
If you are working with zonal clusters, set your default compute zone:
```
gcloud config set compute/zone compute-zone
```
If you are working with regional clusters, set your default compute region:
```
gcloud config set compute/region compute-region
```
Update gcloud to the latest version:
```
gcloud components update
```

Note: You can override these default settings in gcloud commands using the --project, --zone, and --region flags.

Create a cluster for Windows workloads (Beta)

Use the gcloud container command to create a cluster and the necessary node pool. See the command documentation for other flags you might want to use.

Your cluster version must:

Use GKE 1.16.
Specify cloud-platform for the scopes value.

Creating a cluster using Windows Server node pools includes additional information you might find useful for creating clusters to run node pools running Windows Server.

gcloud container clusters create cluster-name \
      --enable-ip-alias \
      --num-nodes=1 \
      --machine-type=n1-standard-2 \
      --scopes "cloud-platform" \
      --cluster-version=1.16 \
      --network network \
      --subnetwork subnetwork

gcloud container node-pools create node-pool-name \
      --cluster=cluster-name \
      --image-type=WINDOWS_SAC \
      --num-nodes=1 \
      --scopes "cloud-platform" \
      --machine-type=n1-standard-2

Next Steps

Installing Migrate for Anthos