How to deploy on GKE

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is a highly scalable and fully automated Kubernetes service. To access the GKE Web interface, go to console.cloud.google.com/compute.

This guide will walk you through setting up a cluster and deploying PostgreSQL K8s on GKE.

Prerequisites

This guide assumes you have:

  • A physical or virtual machine running Ubuntu 22.04+

  • Juju 3 (3.6+ is recommended)

Install GKE tooling

Install kubectl, and Google Cloud command-line tools via snap:

sudo snap install kubectl --classic
sudo snap install google-cloud-cli --classic

Authenticate

Log in to a Google account with the command

gcloud auth login

This should open a page in your browser starting with https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/... where you can complete the login.

If successful, the command prompt will show:

You are now logged in as [<account>@gmail.com].

Configure project ID

Next, you must associate this installation with GCloud project using “Project ID” from resource-management:

gcloud config set project <PROJECT_ID>

Sample output:

Updated property [core/project].

Install additional gcloud CLI tool

As a last step, install the Debian package google-cloud-sdk-gke-gcloud-auth-plugin using this Google guide: Install the gcloud CLI.

Create a new GKE cluster

This guide will use high-availability zone europe-west1 and compute engine type n1-standard-4 in command examples. Make sure to choose the zone and resources that best suit your use-case.

The following command will start three compute engines on Google Cloud and deploy a K8s cluster (you can imagine the compute engines as three physical servers in clouds):

gcloud container clusters create --zone europe-west1-c $USER-$RANDOM --cluster-version 1.25 --machine-type n1-standard-4 --num-nodes=3 --no-enable-autoupgrade

Next, assign your account as an admin of the newly created K8s cluster:

kubectl create clusterrolebinding cluster-admin-binding-$USER --clusterrole=cluster-admin --user=$(gcloud config get-value core/account)

Bootstrap Juju on GKE

Bootstrap a new juju controller on the new cluster by running the following commands:

/snap/juju/current/bin/juju add-k8s gke-jun-9 --storage=standard --client
juju bootstrap gke-jun-9
juju add-model welcome-model

Note

This known issue forces non-snap Juju usage to add-k8s credentials on Juju.

At this stage, Juju is ready to use GKE. Check the list of currently running K8s pods with:

kubectl get pods -n welcome-model

Deploy charms

The following commands deploy PostgreSQL K8s and PgBouncer K8s:

juju deploy postgresql-k8s --channel 16/edge --trust
juju deploy pgbouncer-k8s --trust

To track the status of the deployment, run

juju status --watch 1s

List clusters and clouds

To list GKE clusters and juju clouds, run:

gcloud container clusters list

Sample output:

>NAME          LOCATION        MASTER_VERSION   MASTER_IP      MACHINE_TYPE   NODE_VERSION     >NUM_NODES  STATUS
>mykola-18187  europe-west1-c  1.25.9-gke.2300  31.210.22.127  n1-standard-4  1.25.9-gke.2300  3          >RUNNING
>taurus-7485   europe-west1-c  1.25.9-gke.2300  142.142.21.25  n1-standard-4  1.25.9-gke.2300  3          >RUNNING

Juju can handle multiple clouds simultaneously. To see a list of clouds with registered credentials on Juju, run:

juju clouds

Sample output:

>Clouds available on the controller:
>Cloud      Regions  Default       Type
>gke-jun-9  1        europe-west1  k8s  
>
>Clouds available on the client:
>Cloud           Regions  Default       Type  Credentials  Source    Description
>gke-jun-9       1        europe-west1  k8s   1            local     A Kubernetes Cluster
>localhost       1        localhost     lxd   1            built-in  LXD Container Hypervisor
>microk8s        0                      k8s   1            built-in  A local Kubernetes context
>

Clean up

Caution

Always clean GKE resources that are no longer necessary - they could be costly!

To clean GKE clusters and juju clouds, use:

juju destroy-controller gke-jun-9-europe-west1 --yes --destroy-all-models --destroy-storage --force
juju remove-cloud gke-jun-9

gcloud container clusters list
gcloud container clusters delete <cluster_name> --zone europe-west1-c

Revoke the GCloud user credentials:

gcloud auth revoke [email protected]

You should see a confirmation output:

>Revoked credentials:
 >- [email protected]
>