GCP

Creating a cluster via the CLI on Google Cloud Platform.

Creating a Cluster via the CLI

In this guide, we will create an HA Kubernetes cluster in GCP with 1 worker node. We will assume an existing Cloud Storage bucket, and some familiarity with Google Cloud. If you need more information on Google Cloud specifics, please see the official Google documentation.

Environment Setup

We’ll make use of the following environment variables throughout the setup. Edit the variables below with your correct information.

# Storage account to use
export STORAGE_BUCKET="StorageBucketName"
# Region
export REGION="us-central1"

Create the Image

First, download the Google Cloud image from a Talos release. These images are called gcp-$ARCH.tar.gz.

Upload the Image

Once you have downloaded the image, you can upload it to your storage bucket with:

gsutil cp /path/to/gcp-amd64.tar.gz gs://$STORAGE_BUCKET

Register the image

Now that the image is present in our bucket, we’ll register it.

gcloud compute images create talos \
 --source-uri=gs://$STORAGE_BUCKET/gcp-amd64.tar.gz \
 --guest-os-features=VIRTIO_SCSI_MULTIQUEUE

Network Infrastructure

Load Balancers and Firewalls

Once the image is prepared, we’ll want to work through setting up the network. Issue the following to create a firewall, load balancer, and their required components.

# Create Instance Group
gcloud compute instance-groups unmanaged create talos-ig \
  --zone $REGION-b

# Create port for IG
gcloud compute instance-groups set-named-ports talos-ig \
    --named-ports tcp6443:6443 \
    --zone $REGION-b

# Create health check
gcloud compute health-checks create tcp talos-health-check --port 6443

# Create backend
gcloud compute backend-services create talos-be \
    --global \
    --protocol TCP \
    --health-checks talos-health-check \
    --timeout 5m \
    --port-name tcp6443

# Add instance group to backend
gcloud compute backend-services add-backend talos-be \
    --global \
    --instance-group talos-ig \
    --instance-group-zone $REGION-b

# Create tcp proxy
gcloud compute target-tcp-proxies create talos-tcp-proxy \
    --backend-service talos-be \
    --proxy-header NONE

# Create LB IP
gcloud compute addresses create talos-lb-ip --global

# Forward 443 from LB IP to tcp proxy
gcloud compute forwarding-rules create talos-fwd-rule \
    --global \
    --ports 443 \
    --address talos-lb-ip \
    --target-tcp-proxy talos-tcp-proxy

# Create firewall rule for health checks
gcloud compute firewall-rules create talos-controlplane-firewall \
     --source-ranges 130.211.0.0/22,35.191.0.0/16 \
     --target-tags talos-controlplane \
     --allow tcp:6443

# Create firewall rule to allow talosctl access
gcloud compute firewall-rules create talos-controlplane-talosctl \
  --source-ranges 0.0.0.0/0 \
  --target-tags talos-controlplane \
  --allow tcp:50000

Cluster Configuration

With our networking bits setup, we’ll fetch the IP for our load balancer and create our configuration files.

LB_PUBLIC_IP=$(gcloud compute forwarding-rules describe talos-fwd-rule \
               --global \
               --format json \
               | jq -r .IPAddress)

talosctl gen config talos-k8s-gcp-tutorial https://${LB_PUBLIC_IP}:443

Additionally, you can specify --config-patch with RFC6902 jsonpatch which will be applied during the config generation.

Compute Creation

We are now ready to create our GCP nodes.

# Create the control plane nodes.
for i in $( seq 1 3 ); do
  gcloud compute instances create talos-controlplane-$i \
    --image talos \
    --zone $REGION-b \
    --tags talos-controlplane \
    --boot-disk-size 20GB \
    --metadata-from-file=user-data=./controlplane.yaml
done

# Add control plane nodes to instance group
for i in $( seq 0 1 3 ); do
  gcloud compute instance-groups unmanaged add-instances talos-ig \
      --zone $REGION-b \
      --instances talos-controlplane-$i
done

# Create worker
gcloud compute instances create talos-worker-0 \
  --image talos \
  --zone $REGION-b \
  --boot-disk-size 20GB \
  --metadata-from-file=user-data=./join.yaml

Bootstrap Etcd

You should now be able to interact with your cluster with talosctl. We will need to discover the public IP for our first control plane node first.

CONTROL_PLANE_0_IP=$(gcloud compute instances describe talos-controlplane-0 \
                     --zone $REGION-b \
                     --format json \
                     | jq -r '.networkInterfaces[0].accessConfigs[0].natIP')

Set the endpoints and nodes:

talosctl --talosconfig talosconfig config endpoint $CONTROL_PLANE_0_IP
talosctl --talosconfig talosconfig config node $CONTROL_PLANE_0_IP

Bootstrap etcd:

talosctl --talosconfig talosconfig bootstrap

Retrieve the `kubeconfig`

At this point we can retrieve the admin kubeconfig by running:

talosctl --talosconfig talosconfig kubeconfig .

Last modified March 18, 2022: docs: overhaul all the docs (e3fda049f)

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