Windows Containers on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Steps to deploy a Windows container on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Setup

Update gcloud to latest:

gcloud components update --quiet

Set a cluster name and zone:

export CLUSTER_NAME=windows-cluster
export ZONE=europe-west1-b
gcloud config set compute/zone ${ZONE}

Create a cluster

Create a GKE cluster on rapid channel and ip-alias enabled:

gcloud beta container clusters create ${CLUSTER_NAME} \
--enable-ip-alias \
--num-nodes=2 \
--release-channel=rapid

Create a Windows node-pool:

gcloud container node-pools create windows-node-pool \
--cluster=${CLUSTER_NAME} \
--image-type=WINDOWS_LTSC \
--no-enable-autoupgrade \
--machine-type=n1-standard-2

Enable kubectl to work with the cluster:

gcloud container clusters get-credentials ${CLUSTER_NAME}

Ensure that the webhook for Windows containers is created:

kubectl get mutatingwebhookconfigurations

NAME                                                 CREATED AT
...
windows.config.common-webhooks.networking.gke.io     2020-01-20T15:09:16Z

Deploy a Windows container

Create an iis.yaml deployment file with windows node selector:

nodeSelector:
   kubernetes.io/os: windows

Create the deployment:

kubectl apply -f iis.yaml

deployment.apps/iis created

Expose the deployment behind a service:

kubectl expose deployment iis \
--type=LoadBalancer \
--name=iis

Validate that pods are running:

kubectl get pods

NAME                   READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
iis-85cbdcf7ff-xc6r2   1/1     Running   0          6m45s

Validate that the service has an external ip:

kubectl get service iis

NAME   TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP      PORT(S)        AGE
iis    LoadBalancer   10.100.10.143   35.195.123.123   80:31318/TCP   5m26s

Test the Windows container:

curl http://${EXTERNAL_IP}