Creating a Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster

Instructions on setting up a managed k8s cluster on the Google Cloud Platform

Prerequisites

You will need the following:

A Google account and project: Log in to GCP, and select or create a Project where you will create the k8s cluster.
Gcloud CLI: Command-line tool to manage resources in GCP. Download it here
Kubectl: The Kubernetes command-line tool, kubectl, allows you to run commands against Kubernetes clusters. Download it from Kubernetes.io.

Enable the Kubernetes Engine API. If the kubernetes engine API is not enabled for your GCP project, you need to enable it.
Click Create to launch the k8s cluster wizard.

If you don’t get see this page, Choose Kubernetes Engine → clusters from the main menu.
The XP Operator does not support Autopilot clusters, choose the Standard clusters instead.
Follow the cluster creation steps by setting the values based on your cluster needs.

Make sure to chose kubernetes version >= 1.27 which is requried by XP operator.

Once the k8s cluster is created, click the cluster name
Then click Connect on the top middle section of the page. This shows you the gcloud command you can use to connect to the k8s cluster from your computer.
Copy and run the gcloud command. If the command outputs kubeconfig entry generated for <newly-created-k8s-cluster-name>, it means proper kubectl config is generated on your computer and you are successfully authenticated to the k8s cluster.
To verify your access to the k8s cluster run the command
```
kubectl get namespaces
```
This should display the list of namespaces in the newly created k8s cluster. The "Age" column in the output shows how long has it been since the namespaces are created.

XP will require specific storage classes in order to work properly. List the available storage classes using the following command:

kubectl get storageclasses

TODO: Example

This should display the list of storage classes provisioned by GKE cluster.

Once you are done with your cluster, you can delete the k8s cluster from the GCP console or using gcloud cli:

gcloud container clusters delete <CLUSTER_NAME> --region <REGION_NAME>