Set up Google Kubernetes Engine cluster

The installation and setup guide uses minikube kubernetes cluster which is recommended only for learning and test purposes. Below are instructions for creating production ready kubernetes cluster on Google Cloud Platform.

Set up Kubernetes cluster on GCP GKE

Google offers managed Kubernetes clusters on Google Cloud Platform. There are various configuration setups available depending on your needs.

Below, we present a simple setup to get you up and running as quickly as possible. For a more complex scenario and all available options, please see the official Google documentation.

Prerequisites

  • Google Kubernetes Engine API enabled in your GCP account;
  • Cloud SDK and kubectl installed on the machine on which you will run the commands.

Cluster Setup

gcloud container clusters create [CLUSTER_NAME] [--zone=[COMPUTE_ZONE]] [--region=[COMPUTE_REGION]] [--project=[PROJECT_ID]]

This command creates a single-zone kubernetes cluster on GCP with the default options:

  • 3 n1-standard-1 nodes
  • 100GB pd-standard disks each
  • Container Optimized OS
  • connected to the default network

For more info about this command visit https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/container/clusters/create

For available zones and regions visit https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/regions-zones/#available

Set up kubectl

When you create a cluster using gcloud container clusters create, an entry is automatically added to the kubeconfig in your environment, and the current context changes to that cluster.

All clusters have a canonical endpoint. The endpoint is the IP address of the Kubernetes API server that kubectl and other services use to communicate with your cluster master.

gcloud container clusters get-credentials [CLUSTER_NAME] [--zone=[COMPUTE_ZONE]] [--region=[COMPUTE_REGION]] [--project=[PROJECT_ID]]

Once you have a working cluster and kubectl is able to connect to it, you can continue following the installation and setup guide, just be sure you skip the minikube start command.