Demo Creating our First GKE cluster

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to launch a zonal Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster using Google Cloud Shell. By following these steps, you will:

Open and configure Cloud Shell
Set a default compute zone to simplify future commands
Provision a GKE cluster with a custom boot disk
Validate the cluster creation via CLI and Console

This walkthrough is perfect for DevOps engineers and cloud practitioners who want to get started with GKE on Google Cloud.

Prerequisites

A Google Cloud project with billing enabled
The Kubernetes Engine Admin or Owner IAM role
Access to Cloud Shell

1. Activate Cloud Shell

Sign in to the Google Cloud Console.
Click the Activate Cloud Shell button in the top-right toolbar.
Wait for the shell to initialize; you should see a prompt like:

Welcome to Cloud Shell! Type "help" to get started.
Your Cloud Platform project in this session is set to clgcporg8-015.
Use "gcloud config set project [PROJECT_ID]" to change to a different project.
odl_user_1038285@cloudshell:~  $

2. Set the Default Compute Zone

Rather than appending --zone to every gcloud command, define a default zone for this session. In this lesson, we’ll use us-west1-a:

gcloud config set compute/zone us-west1-a

Expected output:

Updated property [compute/zone].

Why Set a Default Zone?

Defining a default zone streamlines your workflow by removing the need to specify it repeatedly, reducing the risk of mistakes.

3. Provision the GKE Cluster

We’ll create a cluster named gke-deep-dive with one node and a custom HDD boot disk. You can adjust these parameters to suit your needs.

Setting	Description	Flag
Cluster name	Human-readable identifier	`--cluster=gke-deep-dive`
Node count	Number of worker nodes	`--num-nodes=1`
Disk type	Standard HDD (pd-standard)	`--disk-type=pd-standard`
Disk size	10 GiB	`--disk-size=10`

Execute:

gcloud container clusters create gke-deep-dive \
  --num-nodes=1 \
  --disk-type=pd-standard \
  --disk-size=10

You’ll see output similar to:

Creating cluster gke-deep-dive in us-west1-a...
Cluster is being configured...working...

Cluster Provisioning Time

Cluster creation typically takes 10–15 minutes. Do not interrupt the process.
Monitor progress via the Cloud Shell output or the GKE Console.

4. Verify Cluster Creation

a) Using the CLI

List all GKE clusters in your project:

gcloud container clusters list

You should see:

NAME            LOCATION     MASTER_VERSION  NODE_VERSION   NODE_COUNT
gke-deep-dive   us-west1-a   1.24.8-gke.100  1.24.8-gke.100  1

b) Using the Cloud Console

In the Google Cloud Console, navigate to Kubernetes Engine ▶ Clusters.
Confirm that gke-deep-dive appears under us-west1-a.

Congratulations! You’ve successfully created and verified your first GKE cluster.

References

Watch Video

Watch video content