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Google Kubernetes Engine

Google Kubernetes Engine

Overview

What is Google Kubernetes Engine?

Google Kubernetes Engine supplies containerized application management powered by Kubernetes which includes Google Cloud services including load balancing, automatic scaling and upgrade, and other Google Cloud services.

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Recent Reviews
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Awards

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Pricing

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Autopilot Mode - 3 year commitment price (USD)

$0

Cloud
GKE Autopilot Ephemeral Storage Price GB-hr

Autopilot Mode - 1 year commitment price (USD)

$0.0000438

Cloud
GKE Autopilot Ephemeral Storage Price GB-hr

Autopilot Mode - Regular Price

$0.0000548

Cloud
GKE Autopilot Ephemeral Storage Price GB-hr

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://cloud.google.com/kubernetes…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $0.04 vCPU-hr Autopilot Mode
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Product Details

What is Google Kubernetes Engine?

Google Kubernetes Engine Video

A Short Explanation into Google Kubernetes Engine

Google Kubernetes Engine Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Google Kubernetes Engine supplies containerized application management powered by Kubernetes which includes Google Cloud services including load balancing, automatic scaling and upgrade, and other Google Cloud services.

Google Kubernetes Engine starts at $0.0445.

Reviewers rate Usability and Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.

The most common users of Google Kubernetes Engine are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(67)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-7 of 7)
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use GKE to deploy our in-hours custom-made applications along with popular public applications like prometheus/grafana. The applications that we deploy and need to support are both stateful and stateless.
  • Deployment of a new GKE cluster is really fast in comparison to other cloud providers.
  • GCP is ahead other vendors and always provide the most up to date Kubernetes version.
  • GKE automation for master upgrade and the worker nodes pool works really well.
  • Support of IPv6.
  • Better GitOps.
  • A "serverless" Kubernetes so we can install Google config connector will be really awesome.
  • Container-native load balancers do not support internal TCP/UDP load balancers or network load balancers.
GKE is the best managed Kubernetes solution out there, it is very well suited to deploy all kinds of application loads for Dev or Production. If you need to migrate your current workload from a monolithic infrastructure or VMs towards a container solution GKE is the go-to for the best results in terms of stability and feature-rich. If you are looking to take full advantage of IPv6 then GKE might not meet your expectations. Container-native load balancers do not support internal TCP/UDP load balancers or network load balancers, functionality of container-native load balancing is currently limited to the HTTP(S) /L7 load balancers only.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The major issue that Google Kubernetes Engine solves for us is that as a managed service, it makes maintenance of the cluster much easier - autoscaling and updating nodes, reliable, and cost-effective.
Using the cluster to keep the microservices for an application up and running - it is intended for workloads that can scale.
  • easy setup for users
  • strong documentation
  • integration with other GCP services
  • errors from liveness probes can be ambiguous to resolve
Google Kubernetes Engine is well suited for dynamic and large workloads since it can scale up with usage. It is easily configurable, which allows for flexibility.
User interface is simple to navigate, which reduces roadblocks for a team with people unfamiliar with Kubernetes.
Great if you are already using other GCP services as it integrates well with that.
Borislav Traykov | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Two products I work on are using Google Kubernetes Engine clusters. For the most part, the development efforts mostly go as far as "put service in container," so stuff such as scalability is left to 3rd party components that we use. The Google Kubernetes Engine can use a specific Google-provided ingress controller that is very beneficial when it comes to integrating with other services/products such as Cloud Armor, but it's also vendor-specific, so it has its own quirks and learning curve. Thus, we use the Google Kubernetes Engine just like a regular managed Kubernetes cloud service. The products we have in the Google Kubernetes Engine cluster deal with data piping, collection, and even some machine learning. The major problem that the Google Kubernetes Engine solves for us is a completely managed cloud Kubernetes service - we have an easier time managing our clusters (updates, scaling, and uptime SLA), doing physical and virtual migrations (moving nodes geographically, data in volumes, etc.).
  • Engine upgrade rollout strategy - well documented and configurable
  • Integration with other Google Cloud services like the Compute Engine, SaaS databases, and some cloud networking like Cloud Armor
  • Graphical interface for a lot of operations - either for a quick peek/overview or actual work done by administrators and/or developers (via the Google Cloud Console, for example)
  • It cannot reach true zero scale - they have a competing(?) product for that - Cloud Run Kubernetes clusters. It seems like the Google Kubernetes Engine may not be as flexible as some people need - in terms of costs and infrastructure.
  • Some networking for the Google Kubernetes Engine is way too "hidden" from other similar services from Google Cloud - like network whitelisting (for the control plane), external IPs(s) are not a part of the VPC network overview, data storage.
  • We had to make a hack for node-specific changes (max open file descriptors) because we put Elastic in our Google Kubernetes Engine clusters. These changes were made as hacks because there is still no official API/command approach to have such a form of control over the cluster's infrastructure.
The Google Kubernetes Engine clusters are very good at being a managed cloud K8s platform - lots of documentation, features, and updates are available. It's also newbie-friendly - for both administrators and developers. Unfortunately, currently, it cannot reach true zero scale - thus, costs (rent for the service) are still involved even if you are barely using it.

Thankfully, it's possible to have alternatives in Google Cloud:
  • Your own K8s cluster on Compute Engine VMs - you manage it completely; it will have access to a lot of Google Cloud services.
  • Cloud Run cluster - less documented but more flexible
  • Anthos clusters - you can use this service for a lot of types of K8s clusters - Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Run, on-prem, AWS, Azure
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a B2C PrivacyTech company running multiple GKE clusters in different regions. I am the only DevOps engineer at the company responsible for all GCP-related.
  • Uptime
  • Reliability
  • Easy UI
  • Logging
  • Cost visibility
  • Dull UI
GKE compared to Azure is a lot easier to quickly bootstrap a project for demo purposes. GKE has much better integration with the Kubernetes open-source project and GKE is the first provider to adopt the newest features and it looks like many of the features on the Kubernetes are well suited for GCP purposes.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
GKE provides a seamless installation method across a whole organization. It is a fair starting point with Kubernetes technologies. Managed Kubernetes allows deploying application test pipelines for software companies with a reasonable overall price. Moreover, the number of POP helps setup quite reliable installation in a regional way.
  • Deployment method (single, zonal, regional).
  • Lifecycle management (stable, regular, rapid).
  • Integrated GCE services (loadbalancers).
  • Multi-regional deployment (better reliability).
  • GPU node availability.
  • Integrated market place.
At the moment, the best-managed cluster on the market. Quick deployment with quite specific project requirements. The mesh ingress (istio) allowed the building of a quite complicated upgrade process for applications.
Kadu Barral | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Google has made the setup of Google Kubernetes Engine easy in the Google Cloud, it comes somewhere in the middle of Iaas and Paas, the user interface is very intuitive, and you can manage your cluster directly through the web interface. It is an excellent tool with lesser management overhead with servers or Kubernetes installation, etc. At the same time gives you the flexibility to manage the cluster and related settings. You can scale up with a few clicks or set up automated scaling based on traffic and various parameters.
  • Automated orchestration, deployment, and scaling of containers
  • Integrated Logging
  • Persistent storage configuration and options.
  • Routes and external DNS integration
Google Kubernetes Engine increases productivity and helps teams focus on their core product without worrying about where to run it. If your application is very small and simple, a serverless option could be better.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Google Kubernetes Engine is being used by our I.T. Department as part of its Cloud Infrastructure. At this time we have decided on Google Kubernetes Engine as our primary tool for Kubernetes and are running test/evaluation workloads with it. The idea is to drive down our cloud infrastructure costs by moving resources off general-purpose cloud environments.
  • Simple setup for new users
  • Easy integration with existing Google Cloud environments
  • Cost effective
  • Not as intuitive as it could be
  • Documentation could be better, especially for people using other Google Cloud tools
  • Not the preferred Kubernetes Engine for many apps
Google Kubernetes Engine is a natural addition for users/organizations already using the Google Cloud Platform. For us, it was a simple addition and was up and running within minutes. Our challenge has been that the public documentation for applications that use Kubernetes is aimed at Amazon Web Services, so it requires extra research and work to get running on Google Kubernetes.
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