A mobile gaming studio is designing a new Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster architecture to host its stateless matchmaking microservices. The operations team has a strict requirement to eliminate all underlying node provisioning, node sizing, and cluster infrastructure management overhead while paying only for the CPU, memory, and storage requested by running Pods. Which GKE cluster architecture should you recommend?
- Provision a GKE Autopilot cluster.Answer
- BProvision a GKE Standard cluster with Cluster Autoscaler enabled on a single node pool.
- CProvision a GKE Standard cluster configured exclusively with Spot VM node pools.
- DProvision a GKE Standard cluster and rely on Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) to automatically provision new Compute Engine worker nodes.
Answer
Provisioning a GKE Autopilot cluster is the correct approach because GKE Autopilot completely hands over node management, security patching, and capacity provisioning to Google Cloud while billing only for requested Pod resources.
GKE Autopilot provisions and manages the entire underlying cluster infrastructure, including nodes, security hardening, and autoscaling. Billing is based on Pod resource requests rather than node uptime, directly satisfying the requirement to eliminate node management overhead.
Step-by-Step Solution
Key Concept
GKE Autopilot vs. Standard Operational Boundaries