Prerequisites¶

gcloud CLI installed - https://cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/install
GCP project-id is set to devops-309909 (gcloud config set project devops-309909)
default GCP region is set to europe-west3 (gcloud config set compute/region europe-west3)

Instructions¶

Install `kubectl`¶

We recommend following upstream Google Kubernetes Engine documentation - https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/how-to/cluster-access-for-kubectl

Don't forget to install required plugins https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/how-to/cluster-access-for-kubectl#install_plugin

Verify `kubectl` installation¶

Verify the kubectl installation by running:

kubectl version --output=yaml --client

You should see something like this:

clientVersion:
  buildDate: "2023-03-18T02:16:17Z"
  compiler: gc
  gitCommit: 9e644106593f3f4aa98f8a84b23db5fa378900bd
  gitTreeState: clean
  gitVersion: v1.26.3
  goVersion: go1.19.7
  major: "1"
  minor: "26"
  platform: linux/amd64
kustomizeVersion: v4.5.7

Verify the installation of the plugin.

gke-gcloud-auth-plugin --version

You should see something like this:

Kubernetes v1.26.2-alpha+038d2342e9672c4772e9ee48a3f1dd9438156eba

Setup access to clusters¶

Get kubeconfig for each cluster. Each cluster is then known as "context".

gcloud container clusters get-credentials dev --region=europe-west3
gcloud container clusters get-credentials dev-v2 --region=europe-west3
gcloud container clusters get-credentials stage --region=europe-west3
gcloud container clusters get-credentials prod --region=europe-west3
gcloud container clusters get-credentials gitlab-runners --region=europe-west3

(Optional) Rename the context to more user-friendly names, for example:

kubectl config rename-context gke_devops-309909_europe-west3_dev dev
kubectl config rename-context gke_devops-309909_europe-west3_dev-v2 dev-v2
kubectl config rename-context gke_devops-309909_europe-west3_stage stage
kubectl config rename-context gke_devops-309909_europe-west3_prod prod
kubectl config rename-context gke_devops-309909_europe-west3_gitlab-runners gitlab-runners

Switching clusters and namespaces¶

Although you have multiple clusters (contexts) configured now, your kubectl command operates on a single one: the current context. You can list the contexts and set the current context with:

> kubectl config get-contexts
CURRENT   NAME             CLUSTER                                         AUTHINFO                                        NAMESPACE
*         dev              gke_devops-309909_europe-west3_dev              gke_devops-309909_europe-west3_dev
          dev-v2           gke_devops-309909_europe-west3_dev-v2           gke_devops-309909_europe-west3_dev-v2           python-example
          prod             gke_devops-309909_europe-west3_prod             gke_devops-309909_europe-west3_prod             candlekeeper
          stage            gke_devops-309909_europe-west3_stage            gke_devops-309909_europe-west3_stage            kong

> kubectl config set-context stage
Context "stage" modified.

Your kubectl operates on a current namespace (default namespace by default). The current namespace is stored in your cluster configuration and can be changed with:

> kubectl config set-context --current --namespace=candlekeeper
Context "dev" modified.

PRO tip¶

Do you want to quickly switch between clusters (contexts) and namespaces?
kubectx for easy cluster switching
kubens for easy namespace switching
Do you want to see which cluster / namespace are you currently on in your terminal?
use kube-ps1 to modify your prompt

k9s tool¶

k9s is a popular CLI-style management tool.

Troubleshooting¶

As a developer, your permissions may be limited to your project's resources. Upon start, the k9s tries to list resources from all namespaces and may fail and exit. In such a case, you can apply either of following fixes:

Tell k9s to use your namespace only: k9s --namespace candlekeeper
Set your current namespace as described in previous chapters before starting k9s