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Hello and welcome back. This lesson reviews Sprint 02: what we set out to do, what we accomplished, and the practical verification steps you should run to confirm a working Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) environment.

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Sprint objectives

When this sprint began, our primary goals were:
  • Create a Google Cloud Platform (GCP) account.
  • Learn the fundamentals of Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).
  • Provision and configure a GKE cluster.

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Goals and status

Yes — we met the sprint objectives. In addition to provisioning the cluster, we explored adjacent tasks that are essential for day-to-day operations: fetching credentials, configuring kubeconfig, and basic kubectl verification.

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Connect to your GKE cluster

A common, practical workflow is to use the gcloud CLI to fetch cluster credentials and then use kubectl to interact with the cluster. Example commands:
After running gcloud container clusters get-credentials, kubectl get nodes should return the cluster nodes, confirming your local kubeconfig points to the GKE cluster.

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Common verification and troubleshooting commands

If you see authentication errors, re-run the get-credentials command and check gcloud auth list to confirm the active account and project.
When a task lists a high-level objective (like “set up GKE”), treat it as a starting point. Explore the necessary subtasks—credential management, kubeconfig configuration, and basic kubectl checks—so you gain practical, working knowledge rather than only completing checklist items.

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Key takeaway

Completing the sprint checklist is valuable, but validating your work through adjacent steps (credential fetching, kubeconfig verification, and basic kubectl commands) ensures you can operate the cluster reliably and troubleshoot issues quickly.
  • Practice creating deployments and services with kubectl apply.
  • Explore GKE node pools and autoscaling.
  • Learn how IAM roles and service accounts interact with GKE.
Links and references This concludes the sprint review. See you in the next lesson.

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