GKE

KSail supports Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) as a managed Kubernetes distribution via the Google Cloud SDK. A declarative gke.yaml cluster specification defines the cluster shape; KSail provisions it and manages its lifecycle with the same commands used for local clusters.

GKE is the only distribution that uses the GCP provider. It is a cloud distribution — local mirror registries and local registry containers are not supported.

When to Use GKE

GKE is ideal when you:

Need a managed Google Cloud Kubernetes cluster with full cloud integrations (Cloud Load Balancing, Persistent Disk, VPC-native networking)
Want to use the same KSail workflow (init → create → delete) for cloud clusters
Require GitOps workflows (Flux or ArgoCD) on managed Google Cloud infrastructure

For local development and testing, consider the Vanilla, K3s, or VCluster distributions instead.

What GKE Provides by Default

Component	Status	Details
CNI	Built-in	GKE VPC-native networking
CSI	Built-in	GCP Persistent Disk CSI driver
LoadBalancer	Built-in	Google-managed `Service` type `LoadBalancer` support
Metrics Server	Built-in	Provided by GKE

Quick Start

1. Initialize a GKE Project

mkdir my-gke-cluster
cd my-gke-cluster

ksail project init \
  --name gke-default \
  --distribution GKE \
  --provider GCP

This generates:

ksail.yaml — KSail cluster configuration
k8s/kustomization.yaml — directory for Kubernetes manifests

No gke.yaml is scaffolded — you author it when creating a cluster (see below).

2. Author `gke.yaml`

gke.yaml is a GKE Cluster in YAML, using the API’s camelCase field names. A minimal example:

name: gke-default
location: europe-north1
nodePools:
  - name: default
    initialNodeCount: 1

Creating a cluster requires this file; operations on an existing cluster — read-only ones (list, info) and lifecycle ones (start, stop, delete) — work without it. Unknown fields are rejected, so the file stays in lockstep with the GKE API. Store it next to ksail.yaml, or point spec.cluster.distributionConfig at a custom path.

3. Set Credentials and Create the Cluster

gcloud auth application-default login
export GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT=my-project
export GOOGLE_CLOUD_LOCATION=europe-north1

ksail cluster create

See the GCP provider guide for the full credential and environment-variable reference.

Lifecycle

Command	Effect
`ksail cluster create`	Provisions the cluster from `gke.yaml` and waits for completion
`ksail cluster delete`	Deletes the cluster
`ksail cluster stop`	Scales all node pools to zero to halt node costs
`ksail cluster start`	Restores node pools to their configured size
`ksail cluster list`	Lists clusters (searches all locations when no location is set)
`ksail cluster info`	Shows cluster details

Limitations

Cloud distribution — local Docker containers (mirrors, registries) are inaccessible from the cluster
Only one provider is supported: GCP
The control plane keeps running (and billing) while node pools are stopped — use ksail cluster delete to stop all charges

GKE