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A GKE cluster consists of a control plane and one or more worker nodes. Understanding how these components interact is essential for designing, troubleshooting, and optimising your Kubernetes workloads on Google Cloud.
The control plane is the brain of the Kubernetes cluster. In GKE, the control plane is fully managed by Google — you do not provision, patch, or maintain it. Google guarantees its availability with a financially-backed SLA.
| Component | Role |
|---|---|
| kube-apiserver | The front door — all communication with the cluster goes through the API server |
| etcd | Distributed key-value store that persists all cluster state |
| kube-scheduler | Assigns pods to nodes based on resource requirements, affinity rules, and constraints |
| kube-controller-manager | Runs controllers that reconcile desired state with actual state (e.g., ReplicaSet controller, Node controller) |
| cloud-controller-manager | Integrates with Google Cloud APIs (load balancers, routes, disks) |
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