> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://tdiesler.gitbook.io/cardano/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://tdiesler.gitbook.io/cardano/k8s/install-kubernetes.md).

# Creating a Kubernetes Cluster

This page shows how to run Kubernetes on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

## Installing Google Cloud SDK

To install [gcloud](https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/quickstart) and kubectl, perform the following steps:

1. Install the Cloud SDK, which includes the gcloud command-line tool.
2. Install the kubectl command-line tool

```
$ gcloud components install kubectl
```

## Configure default settings

Here we set the project id that will be the home for our Kubernetes nodes and the primary geographic zone for the cluster.

```
PROJECT_ID=beaconchain

CLUSTER_NAME=cardano
CLUSTER_ZONE=us-central1-a

# Setting a default project ID
$ gcloud config set project $PROJECT_ID

# Setting a default compute zone or region
$ gcloud config set compute/zone $CLUSTER_ZONE
```

## Creating a GKE cluster

Lets [create](https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/container/clusters/create) a single zone cluster with two medium size nodes.

```
$ gcloud container clusters create $CLUSTER_NAME \
  --disk-size=32GB \
  --machine-type=e2-medium \
  --node-locations=$CLUSTER_ZONE \
  --zone=$CLUSTER_ZONE \
  --num-nodes=2

Creating cluster cardano in us-central1-a... Cluster is being health-checked (master is healthy)...done.                                                           

NAME     LOCATION       MASTER_VERSION    MASTER_IP       MACHINE_TYPE  NODE_VERSION      NUM_NODES  STATUS
cardano  us-central1-a  1.18.12-gke.1210  34.123.140.191  e2-medium     1.18.12-gke.1210  2          RUNNING
```

Great, to install Kubernetes on two nodes and network them together to form a cluster took about 1min.

## Get credentials for the cluster

```
$ gcloud container clusters get-credentials $CLUSTER_NAME

Fetching cluster endpoint and auth data.
kubeconfig entry generated for cardano.
```

We should now be able to use the `kubectl` command

```
$ kubectl cluster-info

Kubernetes master is running at https://34.123.140.191
GLBCDefaultBackend is running at https://34.123.140.191/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/default-http-backend:http/proxy
KubeDNS is running at https://34.123.140.191/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/kube-dns:dns/proxy
Metrics-server is running at https://34.123.140.191/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/https:metrics-server:/proxy
```