Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is Google Cloud’s managed Kubernetes service. It provides a full-fledged, multi-node cluster without requiring you to configure the worker nodes and networking yourself. section 3.1.4 section 3.1
Managed Kubernetes shifts cluster management to the cloud provider while you work through the Kubernetes API. This makes GKE suitable for learning, development, and running applications without first mastering cluster installation and administration. section 1.3.2 section 1.0
Creating a GKE cluster generally involves:
- Create a Google Cloud project, enable billing, and install the Google Cloud SDK, which provides the gcloud command-line tool. section 3.1.4
- Choose a geographical region and zone, or configure a region when distributing nodes across zones. section 3.1.4
- Create the cluster with gcloud; the command generates a kubeconfig entry so Kubernetes tools can connect to it. section 3.1.4
Create a three-node cluster
Set a default zone and create a cluster with three worker nodes: `gcloud config set compute/zone europe-west3-c`, followed by `gcloud container clusters create kiada --num-nodes 3`. Successful output reports the cluster as RUNNING and generates its kubeconfig entry. section 3.1.4
$ gcloud container clusters create kiada --num-nodes 3 Creating cluster kiada in europe-west3-c... ... kubeconfig entry generated for kiada. NAME LOCAT. MASTER_VER MASTER_IP MACH_TYPE ... NODES STATUS kiada eu-w3-c 1.13.11... 5.24.21.22 n1-standard-1 ... 3 RUNNING
Inspect the cluster-creation command and representative output, including its location, node count, Kubernetes version, and RUNNING status. section 3.1.4
