GKE deployment options

This page shows the Google Cloud features thatare available on each of the following environments:

This page is for Operators who define IT solutions and systemarchitecture in accordance with company strategy in coordination with keystakeholders. To learn more about common roles and example tasks that wereference in Google Cloud content, seeCommon GKEuser roles and tasks.

Enable GKE and related features

This section describes how to enable the features that are described onthis page.

Enable GKE

To enable GKE, enable the GKE API.

Enable GKE API

Enabling this API gives you access to the GKE, which includesthe following features:

Enable related products and features

To use the following products and features with GKE, you mustenable each of these features individually. For more information, see thefollowing links.

See the following pricing guides for detailed information about how theseproducts and features are billed.

Features available on GKE clusters on Google Cloud

To use some features, you must register the cluster to afleet.You can see which features require fleets in the following table.

A small number of features aren't supported onAutopilotclusters. These are alsoshown in the table.

FeatureAvailable on GKE standard clustersAvailable on Autopilot clustersAvailable without fleet membership
Config Sync
Policy Controller
Config Controller
Cloud Service Mesh in-cluster
Managed Cloud Service Mesh
Knative serving
Migrate to Containers
GKE Identity Service
Binary Authorization
Multi Cluster Ingress
Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring for GKE system components
Advanced security posture and compliance monitoring
Node to node encryption
FQDN network policies

Features available on clusters outside of Google Cloud

The following tables show which key Google Cloud andGKE features are available on clusters outside ofGoogle Cloud.

For more information about which versions of the featuresare supported on each environment, see theversion supportmatrix.

Plugins and load balancers

GKE clusters outside of Google Cloud use acombination of built-in GKE capabilities along withplatform-native capabilities.

FeatureGDC (VMware)GDC (bare metal)GKE on AWSGKE on AzureAttached clustersGDC (connected)
Network plugin
Container storage interface (CSI) & hybrid storage
Bundled L4 load balancer
Platform-native load balancersN/AN/AN/A

Operations and management

FeatureGDC (VMware)GDC (bare metal)GKE on AWSGKE on AzureAttached clustersGDC (connected)
GKE dashboard in the Google Cloud console
Connect Gateway
Cloud Logging andCloud Monitoring
Prometheus/Grafana

Security and Identity

FeatureGDC (VMware)GDC (bare metal)GKE on AWSGKE on AzureAttached clustersGDC (connected)
GKE Identity Service
Fleet workload identity
Cloud Audit Logs
Binary Authorization

Service management

FeatureGDC (VMware)GDC (bare metal)GKE on AWSGKE on AzureAttached clustersGDC (connected)
Cloud Service Mesh in-cluster*
Managed Cloud Service Mesh
Service dashboards in the Google Cloud console*
Cloud Service Mesh certificate authority
Cloud Service Mesh integration with Certificate Authority Service

* For the list of attached clusters that Cloud Service Mesh supports, seeSupported platforms.

Configuration management

FeatureGDC (VMware)GDC (bare metal)GKE on AWSGKE on AzureAttached clustersGDC (connected)
Policy Controller*
Config Sync
Config Controller

* To install Policy Controller, AKS clusters must nothave the Azure Policy add-on.

Application deployment

FeatureGDC (VMware)GDC (bare metal)GKE on AWSGKE on AzureAttached clustersGDC (connected)
Knative serving
Google Cloud Marketplace

Application migration

FeatureGDC (VMware)GDC (bare metal)GKE on AWSGKE on AzureAttached clustersGDC (connected)
Migrate to Containers

VM management

FeatureGDC (VMware)GDC (bare metal)GKE on AWSGKE on AzureAttached clustersGDC (connected)
VM Runtime on Google Distributed Cloud

What's next

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Last updated 2026-02-19 UTC.