Setting up the Google Compute Engine Cloud Provider

In this section, you'll learn how to enable the Google Compute Engine (GCE) cloud provider for custom clusters in Rancher. A custom cluster is one in which Rancher installs Kubernetes on existing nodes.

The official Kubernetes documentation for the GCE cloud provider is here.

> Prerequisites: The service account of Identity and API access on GCE needs the Computer Admin permission.

If you are using Calico,

1. Click ☰ > Cluster Management.

2. On the Clusters page, go to the custom cluster and click *⋮ > Edit YAML. Enter the following configuration:

   rancher_kubernetes_engine_config:  cloud_provider:    name: gce    customCloudProvider: |-       [Global]      project-id=\<your project ID, optional\>      network-name=\<your network, optional if using default network\>      subnetwork-name=\<your subnetwork of the above network, optional if using default network\>      node-instance-prefix=\<your instance group name/your instance name specific prefix, required\>      node-tags=\<your network tags, must patch one or some tags, required\>  network:    options:       calico_cloud_provider: "gce"    plugin: "calico"

If you are using Canal or Flannel,

1. Click ☰ > Cluster Management.

2. On the Clusters page, go to the custom cluster and click *⋮ > Edit YAML. Enter the following configuration:

   rancher_kubernetes_engine_config:  cloud_provider:     name: gce    customCloudProvider: |-       [Global]      project-id=\<your project ID, optional\>      network-name=\<your network, optional if using default network\>      subnetwork-name=\<your subnetwork of the above network, optional if using default network\>      node-instance-prefix=\<your instance group name/your instance name specific prefix, required\>      node-tags=\<your network tags, must patch one or some tags, required\>  services:     kube_controller:       extra_args:        configure-cloud-routes: true # we need to allow the cloud provider configure the routes for the hosts