Install kubectl and configure cluster access

This page explains how to install and configure the kubectl command-line tool.

This page is for IT administrators, Operators, and Developers who set up, monitor, and manage cloud infrastructure, including provisioning and configuring cloud resources. To learn more about common roles and example tasks that are referenced in Google Cloud documentation, see Common GKE Enterprise user roles and tasks.

Overview

kubectl is a command-line tool that you can use to interact with your GKE clusters. To use kubectl with GKE, you must install the tool and configure it to communicate with your clusters. Further kubectl configuration is required if you run multiple clusters in Google Cloud.

This page shows you the following:

• How kubectl works.
• How to install kubectl and any required dependencies.
• How to set a default cluster for kubectl.
• How to run kubectl commands against a specific cluster.

Before you begin

Before you start, make sure you have performed the following tasks:

• Enable the Google Kubernetes Engine API.
Enable Google Kubernetes Engine API
• If you want to use the Google Cloud CLI for this task, install and then initialize the gcloud CLI. If you previously installed the gcloud CLI, get the latest version by running gcloud components update.

Install kubectl

You can install kubectl using the Google Cloud CLI or an external package manager, such as apt or yum.

Install required plugins

kubectl and other Kubernetes clients require an authentication plugin, gke-gcloud-auth-plugin, which uses the Client-go Credential Plugins framework to provide authentication tokens to communicate with GKE clusters.

Before Kubernetes version 1.26 is released, gcloud CLI will start to require that the gke-gcloud-auth-plugin binary is installed. If the plugin is not installed, existing installations of kubectl or other custom Kubernetes clients stop working.

You must install this plugin to use kubectl and other clients to interact with GKE. Existing clients display an error message if the plugin is not installed.

Before you begin, check whether the plugin is already installed:

gke-gcloud-auth-plugin --version

If the output displays version information, skip this section.

You can install the authentication plugin using the gcloud CLI or an external package manager such as apt or yum.

  gcloud components install gke-gcloud-auth-plugin

  apt-get install google-cloud-sdk-gke-gcloud-auth-plugin

  yum install google-cloud-sdk-gke-gcloud-auth-plugin

Verify the gke-gcloud-auth-plugin binary installation:

1. Check the gke-gcloud-auth-plugin binary version:

   gke-gcloud-auth-plugin --version
   

2. Update the kubectl configuration to use the plugin:

   gcloud container clusters get-credentials CLUSTER_NAME \
       --region=COMPUTE_REGION
   

   Replace the following:

   • CLUSTER_NAME: the name of your cluster.
   • COMPUTE_REGION: the Compute Engine region for your cluster. For zonal clusters, use --zone=COMPUTE_ZONE.

3. Verify the configuration by running the following command:

   kubectl get namespaces
   

   The output is similar to the following:

   NAME              STATUS   AGE
   default           Active   51d
   kube-node-lease   Active   51d
   kube-public       Active   51d
   kube-system       Active   51d
   

For more information about this plugin, see the Kubernetes KEP.

Interact with kubectl

Kubernetes uses a YAML file called kubeconfig to store cluster authentication information for kubectl. By default, the file is saved at $HOME/.kube/config.

kubeconfig contains a group of access parameters called contexts. Each context contains a Kubernetes cluster, a user, and an optional default namespace. kubectl refers to contexts when running commands.

Optionally, you can configure kubectl using the following tasks:

• Choose the cluster that kubectl talks to.
• Set the default cluster for kubectl by setting the current context in the kubeconfig file.
• Run kubectl commands against a specific cluster by using the --cluster flag.

View kubeconfig

To view your environment's kubeconfig, run the following command:

kubectl config view

The command returns a list of all clusters for which kubeconfig entries have been generated. If a GKE cluster is listed, you can run kubectl commands against it in your current environment. Otherwise, you need to Store cluster information for kubectl.

View the current context for kubectl

The current context is the cluster that is currently the default for kubectl. All kubectl commands run against that cluster.

When you create a cluster using gcloud container clusters create-auto, an entry is automatically added to the kubeconfig file in your environment, and the current context changes to that cluster. For example:

gcloud container clusters create-auto my-cluster
Creating my-cluster...done
Fetching cluster endpoint and auth data.
kubeconfig entry generated for my-cluster

To view the current context for kubectl, run the following command:

kubectl config current-context

Store cluster information for kubectl

When you create a cluster using the Google Cloud console or using gcloud CLI from a different computer, your environment's kubeconfig file is not updated. Additionally, if a project team member uses gcloud CLI to create a cluster from their computer, their kubeconfig is updated but yours is not. The kubeconfig entry contains either:

• Your credentials as shown in gcloud auth list, or
• The application default credentials, if configured.

To generate a kubeconfig context in your environment, ensure that you have the container.clusters.get permission. The least-privileged IAM role that provides this permission is container.clusterViewer.

To generate a kubeconfig context for a specific cluster, run the following command:

gcloud container clusters get-credentials CLUSTER_NAME \
    --region=CLUSTER_REGION

Replace the following:

• CLUSTER_NAME: the name of your cluster.
• COMPUTE_REGION: the Compute Engine region for your cluster. For zonal clusters, use --zone=COMPUTE_ZONE.

Generate a kubeconfig entry using a cluster's internal IP address

All clusters have multiple endpoint addresses, each with different characteristics. One of these endpoints serves as the canonical endpoint that's used by kubectl and other services to communicate with your cluster control plane. GKE automatically selects the endpoint based on the following order:

• The external IP address (if you have enabled the external endpoint)
• The internal IP address
• The DNS address (if IP access is disabled) To use the canonical endpoint by default, run the get-credentials command. For more control over which endpoint kubectl uses, use the --internal-ip or --dns-endpoint flag. To update your kubeconfig file to use the internal IP address, run the following command:

gcloud container clusters get-credentials CLUSTER_NAME --internal-ip

To update your kubeconfig file to use the DNS address, run the following command:

gcloud container clusters get-credentials CLUSTER_NAME --dns-endpoint

Replace CLUSTER_NAME with the name of your cluster.

By default, running get-credentials uses the IP address specified in the endpoint field.

Set a default cluster for kubectl commands

If you have previously generated a kubeconfig entry for clusters, you can switch the current context for kubectl to that cluster by running the following command:

gcloud container clusters get-credentials CLUSTER_NAME \
    --region=COMPUTE_REGION

Replace the following:

• CLUSTER_NAME: the name of your cluster.
• COMPUTE_REGION: the Compute Engine region for your cluster. For zonal clusters, use --zone=COMPUTE_ZONE.

For example, consider a project with two clusters, my-cluster and my-new-cluster. The current context is my-new-cluster, but you want to run all kubectl commands against my-cluster. To switch the current context from my-new-cluster to my-cluster, run the following command:

gcloud container clusters get-credentials CLUSTER_NAME \
    --region=COMPUTE_REGION

Run individual kubectl commands against a specific cluster

You can run individual kubectl commands against a specific cluster by using --cluster=CLUSTER_NAME.

For example, consider an environment with two clusters, my-cluster and my-new-cluster, in which the current context is my-cluster. You want to deploy an application to my-new-cluster, but you don't want to change the current context. To deploy the application to my-new-cluster without changing the current context, you would run the following command:

kubectl run my-app --image us-docker.pkg.dev/my-project/my-repo/my-app:1.0 --cluster my-new-cluster

What's next

• Learn how to authorize access to resources in GKE clusters.
• Authenticate to Google Cloud services from GKE workloads.
• Read the kubectl cheat sheet.
• Troubleshoot the kubectl command-line tool.