Sprint 02 review

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What We Achieved

1. GCP Account Setup
   • Registered for a Google Cloud Platform account.
   • Enabled billing and configured IAM permissions.
2. GKE Fundamentals
   • Explored key concepts: nodes, pods, control plane, and networking.
   • Reviewed GKE-specific features like auto-scaling and regional clusters.
3. Cluster Provisioning
   • Created a GKE cluster using the gcloud CLI.
   • Retrieved credentials and verified the cluster’s health.

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Essential gcloud & kubectl Commands

# Authenticate with GCP
gcloud auth login

# Set your project ID
gcloud config set project YOUR_PROJECT_ID

# Create a GKE cluster in us-central1-a
gcloud container clusters create my-cluster \
  --zone us-central1-a \
  --machine-type e2-medium \
  --num-nodes 3

# Retrieve cluster credentials for kubectl
gcloud container clusters get-credentials my-cluster \
  --zone us-central1-a

# Verify node status
kubectl get nodes

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Key Takeaways

• Defining sprint tasks is just the starting point; dive into related subtasks (e.g., authentication, IAM) for a deeper understanding.
• Hands-on practice with gcloud and kubectl cements your GKE workflow.
• Validating cluster connectivity early prevents common deployment headaches.

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Next Steps: Sprint 03 Preview

• Deploy a sample application using a Kubernetes Deployment and Service.
• Scale workloads with the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler.
• Perform rolling updates to achieve zero-downtime releases.

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Links and References

• Google Cloud Platform
• GKE Documentation
• kubectl CLI Reference
• Kubernetes Basics