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Connecting GitLab with GKE

Introduced in 10.1.

CAUTION: Warning: The Cluster integration is currently in Beta.

Connect your project to Google Container Engine (GKE) in a few steps.

With a cluster associated to your project, you can use Review Apps, deploy your applications, run your pipelines, and much more in an easy way.

NOTE: Note: The Cluster integration will eventually supersede the Kubernetes integration. For the moment, you can create only one cluster.

Prerequisites

In order to be able to manage your GKE cluster through GitLab, the following prerequisites must be met:

  • The Google authentication integration must be enabled in GitLab at the instance level. If that's not the case, ask your administrator to enable it.
  • Your associated Google account must have the right privileges to manage clusters on GKE. That would mean that a billing account must be set up.
  • You must have Master permissions in order to be able to access the Cluster page.

If all of the above requirements are met, you can proceed to add a new cluster.

Adding a cluster

NOTE: Note: You need Master permissions and above to add a cluster.

To add a new cluster:

  1. Navigate to your project's CI/CD > Cluster page.
  2. Connect your Google account if you haven't done already by clicking the "Sign-in with Google" button.
  3. Fill in the requested values:
    • Cluster name (required) - The name you wish to give the cluster.
    • GCP project ID (required) - The ID of the project you created in your GCP console that will host the Kubernetes cluster. This must not be confused with the project name. Learn more about Google Cloud Platform projects.
    • Zone - The zone under which the cluster will be created. Read more about the available zones.
    • Number of nodes - The number of nodes you wish the cluster to have.
    • Machine type - The machine type of the Virtual Machine instance that the cluster will be based on. Read more about the available machine types.
    • Project namespace - The unique namespace for this project. By default you don't have to fill it in; by leaving it blank, GitLab will create one for you.
  4. Click the Create cluster button.

After a few moments your cluster should be created. If something goes wrong, you will be notified.

Now, you can proceed to enable the Cluster integration.

Enabling or disabling the Cluster integration

After you have successfully added your cluster information, you can enable the Cluster integration:

  1. Click the "Enabled/Disabled" switch
  2. Hit Save for the changes to take effect

You can now start using your Kubernetes cluster for your deployments.

To disable the Cluster integration, follow the same procedure.

Removing the Cluster integration

NOTE: Note: You need Master permissions and above to remove a cluster integration.

NOTE: Note: When you remove a cluster, you only remove its relation to GitLab, not the cluster itself. To remove the cluster, you can do so by visiting the GKE dashboard or using kubectl.

To remove the Cluster integration from your project, simply click on the Remove integration button. You will then be able to follow the procedure and add a cluster again.