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How to Deploy Karpenter on Google Cloud

#kubernetes #googlecloud #devops #news

Karpenter GCP provider is now available in preview, enabling intelligent autoscaling for Kubernetes workloads on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Developed by the CloudPilot AI team in collaboration with the community, this release extends Karpenter's multi-cloud capabilities.

⚠️ This is a preview release and not yet recommended for production use, but it's fully functional for testing and experimentation.

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to deploy the GCP provider using the Helm chart, configure your environment, and set up Karpenter to dynamically launch GCP instances based on your workloads.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure the following are set up:

  • A running GKE cluster with Karpenter controller already installed (see Karpenter installation guide).
  • kubectl configured to access your GKE cluster.
  • helm (v3+) installed.
  • Karpenter CRDs already installed in your cluste
  • GCP permissions: The Karpenter controller and GCP provider need access to create instances, subnets, and disks.

Prepare the GCP Credentials

Enable Required APIs

Enable the necessary Google Cloud APIs for Karpenter to manage compute and Kubernetes resources:

gcloud services enable compute.googleapis.com gcloud services enable container.googleapis.com
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Create Service Account and Download Keys

Create a GCP service account with the following roles:

  • Compute Admin
  • Kubernetes Engine Admin
  • Monitoring Admin
  • Service Account User

These permissions allow Karpenter to manage GCE instances, access GKE metadata, and report monitoring metrics.

After creating the service account, generate a JSON key file and store it in a secure location. This key will be used to authenticate Karpenter with GCP APIs.

google-cloud-service-account

google-cloud-account-keys

Create Cluster Secret

Create a Kubernetes Secret to store your GCP service account credentials:

apiVersion: v1 kind: Secret metadata: name: karpenter-gcp-credentials namespace: karpenter-system type: Opaque stringData: key.json: | { "type": "service_account", "project_id": "<your-project-id>", "private_key_id": "<your-private-key-id>", "private_key": "<your-private-key>", "client_email": "<your-client-email>", "client_id": "<your-client-id>", "auth_uri": "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth", "token_uri": "https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token", "auth_provider_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/certs", "client_x509_cert_url": "<your-client-x509-cert-url>", "universe_domain": "googleapis.com" }
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Save the above as karpenter-gcp-credentials.yaml, then apply it to your cluster:

kubectl create ns karpenter-system kubectl apply -f karpenter-gcp-credentials.yaml
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Installing the Chart

Set the required environment variables before installing the chart:

export PROJECT_ID=<your-google-project-id> export CLUSTER_NAME=<gke-cluster-name> export REGION=<gke-region-name> # Optional: Set the GCP service account email if you want to use a custom service account for the default node pool templates export DEFAULT_NODEPOOL_SERVICE_ACCOUNT=<your-custom-service-account-email>
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Then clone this repository and install the chart with the following command:

helm upgrade karpenter charts/karpenter --install \ --namespace karpenter-system --create-namespace \ --set "controller.settings.projectID=${PROJECT_ID}" \ --set "controller.settings.region=${REGION}" \ --set "controller.settings.clusterName=${CLUSTER_NAME}" \ --wait
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Testing Node Creation

1. Create NodeClass and NodePool

Apply the following manifests to define how Karpenter should provision nodes on GCP. Be sure to replace <service_account_email_created_before> with the email of the service account you created in the previous step.

cat > nodeclass.yaml <<EOF apiVersion: karpenter.k8s.gcp/v1alpha1 kind: GCENodeClass metadata: name: default-example spec: serviceAccount: "<service_account_email_created_before>" imageSelectorTerms: - alias: ContainerOptimizedOS@latest tags: env: dev EOF kubectl apply -f nodeclass.yaml cat > nodepool.yaml <<EOF apiVersion: karpenter.sh/v1 kind: NodePool metadata: name: default-nodepool spec: weight: 10 template: spec: nodeClassRef: name: default-example kind: GCENodeClass group: karpenter.k8s.gcp requirements: - key: "karpenter.sh/capacity-type" operator: In values: ["on-demand", "spot"] - key: "karpenter.k8s.gcp/instance-family" operator: In values: ["n4-standard", "n2-standard", "e2"] - key: "kubernetes.io/arch" operator: In values: ["amd64"] - key: "topology.kubernetes.io/zone" operator: In values: ["us-central1-c", "us-central1-a", "us-central1-f", "us-central1-b"] EOF kubectl apply -f nodepool.yaml
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2. Create a Workload

Deploy a simple workload to trigger Karpenter to provision a new node:

cat > deployment.yaml <<EOF apiVersion: apps/v1 kind: Deployment metadata: name: inflate spec: replicas: 1 selector: matchLabels: app: inflate template: metadata: labels: app: inflate spec: affinity: nodeAffinity: requiredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution: nodeSelectorTerms: - matchExpressions: - key: karpenter.sh/capacity-type operator: Exists securityContext: runAsUser: 1000 runAsGroup: 3000 fsGroup: 2000 containers: - image: public.ecr.aws/eks-distro/kubernetes/pause:3.2 name: inflate resources: requests: cpu: 250m memory: 250Mi securityContext: allowPrivilegeEscalation: false EOF kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml
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Once the workload is created, check if Karpenter has successfully provisioned a node:

$ kubectl get node NAME STATUS ROLES AGE VERSION gke-cluster-1-test-default-1c921401-kzbh Ready <none> 17d v1.32.4-gke.1415000 gke-cluster-1-test-default-84243800-v30f Ready <none> 17d v1.32.4-gke.1415000 gke-cluster-1-test-default-b4608681-5zq5 Ready <none> 17d v1.32.4-gke.1415000 karpenter-default-nodepool-sp86k Ready <none> 18s v1.32.4-gke.1415000 $ kubectl get nodeclaim NAME TYPE CAPACITY ZONE NODE READY AGE default-nodepool-sp86k e2-small spot us-central1-a karpenter-default-nodepool-sp86k True 46s
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Nodes created by Karpenter will typically have a karpenter.sh/provisioner-name label and may include taints or labels defined in your NodeClass and NodePool.

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Your feedback will help shape the future of multi-cloud autoscaling with Karpenter!

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