Creating and managing Google Kubernetes Engine clusters

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Google Kubernetes Engine is a powerful cluster manager and orchestration system for running your Docker containers. GKE schedules your containers into the cluster and manages them automatically based on the requirements you define (such as CPU and memory). It's built on the open source Kubernetes system, giving you the flexibility to take advantage of on-premises, hybrid, or public cloud infrastructure.

Read the Tools for PowerShell reference to learn more about GKE cmdlets. To learn more about GKE in general, read the Overview of GKE.

Creating and updating GKE clusters

You can create a cluster by first creating a NodeConfig object with New-GkeNodeConfig cmdlet. After that, you can pass in the NodeConfig object to the Add-GkeCluster cmdlet. It will then create a cluster whose node pools will have their configurations set from the NodeConfig object.

# Creates a GKE Node Config with image type CONTAINER_VM
# and 20 GB disk size for each node.
$nodeConfig = New-GkeNodeConfig -DiskSizeGb 20 `
                                -ImageType CONTAINER_VM

# Creates a cluster named "my-cluster" in the default zone of the
# default project using config $nodeConfig and network "my-network".
Add-GkeCluster -NodeConfig $nodeConfig `
               -ClusterName "my-cluster" `
               -Network "my-network"

Instead of passing in the NodeConfig object, you can also use the parameters provided in the Add-GkeCluster cmdlet to create a cluster (a NodeConfig object will be created internally by the cmdlet).

# Creates a cluster named "my-cluster" with description "my new cluster"
# in the default zone of the default project using machine type
# "n1-standard-4" for each Compute Engine in the cluster.
# The cluster will use the subnetwork "my-subnetwork".
# The cluster's nodes will have autoupgrade enabled.
# The cluster will also autoscale its node pool to a maximum of 2 nodes.
Add-GkeCluster -MachineType "n1-standard-4" `
               -ClusterName "my-cluster" `
               -Description "My new cluster" `
               -Subnetwork "my-subnetwork" `
               -EnableAutoUpgrade `
               -MaximumNodesToScaleTo 2

You can update a cluster with Set-GkeCluster cmdlet. Only one property of the cluster can be updated at a time.

# Sets additional zones of cluster "my-cluster" in zone "asia-east1-a"
# to zones "asia-east1-b" and "asia-east1-c". This means the clusters will
# have nodes created in these zones. The primary zone
# ("asia-east1-a" in this case) will be added to the
# AdditionalZone array by the cmdlet.
Set-GkeCluster -ClusterName "my-cluster" `
               -Zone "asia-east1-a" `
               -AdditionalZone "asia-east1-b", "asia-east1-c"

You can list available clusters with Get-GkeCluster cmdlet.

# Lists all container clusters in the default project.
Get-GkeCluster

# List all container clusters in zone "us-central1-a"
# of the default project.
Get-GkeCluster -Zone "us-central1-a"

Creating and Maintaining Node Pools

A node pool is a subset of machines within a cluster that all have the same configuration. While all nodes in a container cluster are identical, node pools let you create pools of machines within your cluster that have different configurations. For example, you might create a pool of nodes in your cluster that have local SSDs or larger instance sizes. Because of this, node pools are useful for customizing the instance profile in your cluster.

To add a node pool to your cluster, you can first create a NodePool object with New-GkeNodePool cmdlet. You can then call Add-GkeNodePool cmdlet to add the NodePool object to a cluster.

# Creates a node pool named "my-nodepool" with image type
# CONTAINER_VM for each node.
$nodePool = New-GkeNodePool -NodePoolName "my-nodepool" `
                            -ImageType CONTAINER_VM

# Adds the pool to cluster "my-cluster".
Add-GkeNodePool -NodePool $nodePool -Cluster "my-cluster"

You can list all the node pools in a cluster with Get-GkeNodePool cmdlet.

# Lists all node pools in cluster "my-cluster" in the default project.
Get-GkeNodePool -ClusterName "my-cluster"

You can remove a node pool from a cluster with Remove-GkeCluster cmdlet.

# Removes the node pool "my-nodepool" in cluster "my-cluster"
# in the zone "us-west1-b" of the default project.
Remove-GkeCluster -ClusterName "my-cluster" `
                  -Zone "us-west1-b" `
                  -NodePoolName "my-nodepool"