GKE on-prem runs Anthos-managed Kubernetes clusters on customer-controlled VMware infrastructure. An admin cluster provides the control plane for monitoring and administering user clusters; production services should remain in user clusters. section 5.2 section 5.2.1
The deployment divides responsibilities across these components:
- Admin workstation: runs the installation workflow and is created by gkeadm. section 5.2.1
- Admin cluster: monitors and administers user clusters without hosting services that could affect its control functions. section 5.2
- User clusters and node pools: provide the workload environment while following the administrative separation used by GKE. section 5.2.1
- VMware datastores or vSAN provide persistent volumes; distributed or standard vSphere switches provide networking. section 5.2.1
A practical installation and operations sequence is:
- Download gkeadm, create a prepopulated configuration, and fill in vCenter credentials, the whitelisted GCP service-account key path, and the vCenter CA certificate. section 5.2.1
- Validate the configuration, create the load balancer, and create the admin and user clusters with gkectl. section 5.2.1
- Use kubeconfig context management to switch safely between administrative and user clusters, then use gkectl for updates and upgrades. section 5.2 section 5.2.1
gsutil cp gs://gke-on-prem-release-public/gkeadm/<anthos version>/linux/gkeadm ./chmod +x gkeadm
The command listings provide a compact operational path from downloading gkeadm and generating configuration to checking, creating, and updating clusters. section 5.2.1
Treat credential handling as an operational risk: vCenter and F5 Big-IP credentials may appear in configuration files. A wrapper around Google Cloud Secret Manager and gcloud can retrieve secrets at deployment time, apply the configuration, and remove substituted values. section 5.2.1
Anthos also supports clusters on GCP, bare metal, AWS, and Azure, plus attached conformant Kubernetes clusters; GKE on-prem specifically denotes the VMware deployment. section 10.2
