Google was the main author of the original Kubernetes project and is still a major contributor. Although this book has mostly focused on running Kubernetes on our own, Google also offers a fully managed container service through the Google Cloud Platform.

Find more information on the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) website at https://cloud.google.com/container-engine/.

Kubernetes will be installed on GKE and will be managed by Google engineers. They also provide private registries and integration with your existing private networks.

You create your first GKE cluster by using the following steps:

1. From the GCP console, in Compute, click on Container Engine, and then on Container Clusters.
2. If this is your first time creating a cluster, you'll have an information box in the middle of the page. Click on the Create a container cluster button.
3. Choose a name for your cluster and the zone. You'll also be able to choose the machine type (instance size) for your nodes and how many nodes (cluster size) you want in your cluster. You'll also see a choice for node image, which lets you choose the base OS and machine image for the nodes themselves. The master is managed and updated by the Google team themselves.
4. Leave Stackdriver logging and Stackdriver monitoring checked. Click on Create, and in a few minutes, you'll have a new cluster ready for use.
5. You'll need kubectl, which is included with the Google SDK, to begin using your GKE cluster. Refer to Chapter 1, Introduction to Kubernetes, for details on installing the SDK. Once we have the SDK, we can configure kubectl and the SDK for our cluster using the steps outlined at https://cloud.google.com/container-engine/docs/before-you-begin#install_kubectl.