GCP Provider

The GCP provider creates managed Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters via the Google Cloud SDK. It is the only provider available for the GKE distribution.

Prerequisites

Google Cloud project — with the Kubernetes Engine API enabled and permissions to create GKE clusters

Application Default Credentials — configured via the gcloud CLI or a service-account key file:

gcloud auth application-default login
# or point at a service-account key:
export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/path/to/key.json

Project and location — exported in the environment:
Terminal window
```
export GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT=my-project
export GOOGLE_CLOUD_LOCATION=europe-north1
```
The location may be a zone (europe-north1-a) or a region (europe-north1), and can also be set in gke.yaml (the environment variable wins when both are set). Listing clusters works without a location by searching all locations.
Docker — required locally for the ksail CLI

Configuration

ksail.yaml Reference

# yaml-language-server: $schema=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/devantler-tech/ksail/main/schemas/ksail-config.schema.json
apiVersion: ksail.io/v1alpha1
kind: Cluster
metadata:
  name: gke-default
spec:
  cluster:
    distribution: GKE
    provider: GCP

By default KSail reads the project from GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT and the location from GOOGLE_CLOUD_LOCATION. If your environment uses different variable names, point KSail at them:

spec:
  provider:
    gcp:
      projectEnvVar: MY_PROJECT_VAR # defaults to GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT
      locationEnvVar: MY_LOCATION_VAR # defaults to GOOGLE_CLOUD_LOCATION

The cluster shape (node pools, versions, networking) lives in gke.yaml — see the GKE distribution guide for the configuration reference.

Characteristics

Property	Value
Supported distribution	GKE
Infrastructure type	Cloud (managed Google Cloud)
Local registries	❌ Not supported
Local mirrors	❌ Not supported (use external URLs)
CNI	GKE VPC-native networking (provided)
CSI	GCP Persistent Disk CSI driver (provided)
LoadBalancer support	Built-in (Google-managed)
Start/Stop	Scales node pools down to 0 / back up

Limitations

Cloud provider — local Docker containers (mirrors, registries) are inaccessible from the cluster
Only one distribution is supported: GKE
Cloud clusters incur Google Cloud charges while running