Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Basics

GKE is a managed Kubernetes platform on Google Cloud for deploying, scaling, and operating containerized applications. This skill defaults to the golden path Autopilot configuration — see gke-golden-path.md for defaults, rules, and guardrails.

Quick Start

gcloud services enable container.googleapis.com gcloud container clusters create-auto my-cluster --region=us-central1 gcloud container clusters get-credentials my-cluster --region=us-central1 kubectl create deployment hello-server
--image=us-docker.pkg.dev/google-samples/containers/gke/hello-app:1.0

Reference Directory

Load the relevant reference based on trigger keywords. Prefer the most specific match; if ambiguous, ask the user to clarify.

Scenario Trigger Keywords Reference

Core Concepts Autopilot vs Standard, architecture, pricing, what is GKE core-concepts.md

Golden Path & Defaults golden path, Day-0 checklist, production defaults, cluster defaults gke-golden-path.md

Cluster Creation create cluster, new cluster, provision GKE gke-cluster-creation.md

Networking private cluster, VPC, subnet, Gateway API, DNS, ingress, egress, datapath gke-networking.md

Security & IAM Workload Identity, Secret Manager, RBAC, Binary Auth, hardening, audit, gVisor, IAM roles gke-security.md

Scaling HPA, VPA, autoscaler, autoscaling, NAP, scale pods, scale nodes gke-scaling.md

Compute Classes ComputeClass, machine family, Spot fallback, GPU node pool, node selection gke-compute-classes.md

Cost cost, savings, Spot VMs, rightsizing, CUD, optimize spend, budget gke-cost.md

AI/ML Inference inference, model serving, LLM, GPU, TPU, GIQ, vLLM gke-inference.md

Upgrades upgrade, maintenance window, release channel, patching, version gke-upgrades.md

Observability monitoring, logging, Prometheus, Grafana, metrics, alerts, dashboards gke-observability.md

Multi-tenancy multi-tenant, namespace isolation, team access, enterprise, RBAC planning gke-multitenancy.md

Batch & HPC batch, HPC, job queue, high performance, MPI, parallel gke-batch-hpc.md

App Onboarding containerize, deploy app, Dockerfile, onboard, migrate to GKE gke-app-onboarding.md

Backup & DR backup, restore, disaster recovery, CMEK gke-backup-dr.md

Storage storage, PVC, persistent volume, StorageClass, Filestore, GCS FUSE gke-storage.md

Reliability PDB, health probe, liveness, readiness, topology spread, graceful shutdown gke-reliability.md

Client Libraries client library, client-go, kubernetes python, kubernetes java, kubernetes SDK client-library-usage.md

Infrastructure as Code Terraform, IaC, HCL, infrastructure as code iac-usage.md

MCP Server MCP tools, MCP server, MCP setup mcp-usage.md

CLI / Tools gcloud, kubectl, commands, how to cli-reference.md

Production Audit production readiness, compliance, golden path check gke-cluster-creation.md

If you need product information not found in these references, use the Developer Knowledge MCP server search_documents tool.