---
title: Charmhub | Deploy GCP-Integrator using Charmhub - The Open Operator Collection
description: Deploy the latest version of GCP-Integrator on any cloud. Charm to enable
  GCP integrations via Juju relations.
url: https://charmhub.io/gcp-integrator
---

# GCP-Integrator

[Canonical Kubernetes](https://charmhub.io/publisher/containers "View all packages from Canonical Kubernetes")

* [Canonical Kubernetes](https://charmhub.io/publisher/containers "View all packages from Canonical Kubernetes")

Platform:

24.04

22.04

20.04

18.04

16.04

stable 86ef0db

```
juju deploy gcp-integrator
```

[Learn to deploy on juju >](https://juju.is/docs/juju/manage-applications)

---

#### Relevant links

* [Contact](mailto:Cory Johns <cory.johns@canonical.com>)

---

#### Contacts

##### Maintainers

+ [Cory Johns](mailto:cory.johns@canonical.com)

---

Share your thoughts on this charm with the community on discourse.

[Join the discussion](https://discourse.charmhub.io/)

**Charmed Kubernetes** will run seamlessly on
**Google Cloud Platform**(GCP). With the addition of the `gcp-integrator`,
your cluster will also be able to use GCP native features directly.

## GCP Credentials

If you have set up a service account with IAM roles as your credential for
Juju, there may be some additional authorisations you will need to make to
access all features of GCP with **Charmed Kubernetes**.

If you have a GCP project set up specifically for **Charmed Kubernetes**, the
quickest route is to simply add the service account as an `Owner` of that
project in the [GCP console][owner].

If you chose a more fine-grained approach to role administration, the service account
should have at least:

* roles/compute.loadBalancerAdmin
* roles/compute.instanceAdmin.v1
* roles/compute.securityAdmin
* roles/iam.serviceAccountUser

A full description of the various pre-defined roles is available in the
[GCP Documentation][iam-roles].

## GCP integrator

The `gcp-integrator` charm simplifies working with **Charmed Kubernetes** on
GCP. Using the credentials provided to Juju, it acts as a proxy between
**Charmed Kubernetes** and the underlying cloud, granting permissions to
dynamically create, for example, storage volumes.

### Installing

If you install **Charmed Kubernetes** [using the Juju bundle][install], you can add the
gcp-integrator at the same time by using the following overlay file ([download
it here][asset-gcp-overlay]):

```
description: Charmed Kubernetes overlay to add native GCP support.
applications:
  gcp-integrator:
    annotations:
      gui-x: "600"
      gui-y: "300"
    charm: cs:~containers/gcp-integrator
    num_units: 1
    trust: true
relations:
  - ['gcp-integrator', 'kubernetes-master']
  - ['gcp-integrator', 'kubernetes-worker']
```

To use this overlay with the **Charmed Kubernetes** bundle, it is specified
during deploy like this:

```
juju deploy charmed-kubernetes --overlay ~/path/gcp-overlay.yaml --trust
```

… and remember to fetch the configuration file!

```
juju scp kubernetes-master/0:config ~/.kube/config
```

For more configuration options and details of the permissions which the
integrator uses, please see the [charm readme][gcp-integrator-readme].

### Using persistent storage

Many pods you may wish to deploy will require storage. Although you can use any
type of storage supported by Kubernetes (see the
[storage documentation][storage]), you also have the option to use the native
GCP storage types.

GCP storage currently comes in two types - SSD (pd-ssd) or
‘standard’(pd-standard). To use these, we need to create a storage classes in
Kubernetes.

For the standard disks:

```
kubectl create -f - <<EOY
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: gcp-standard
provisioner: kubernetes.io/gce-pd
parameters:
  type: pd-standard
EOY
```

Or for SSD:

```
kubectl create -f - <<EOY
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: gcp-ssd
provisioner: kubernetes.io/gce-pd
parameters:
  type: pd-ssd
EOY
```

You can confirm this has been added by running:

```
kubectl get sc
```

which should return:

```
NAME           PROVISIONER            AGE
gcp-ssd        kubernetes.io/gce-pd   9s
gcp-standard   kubernetes.io/gce-pd   45s
```

To actually create storage using this new class, you can make a Persistent Volume Claim:

```
kubectl create -f - <<EOY
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: testclaim
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 100Mi
  storageClassName: gcp-standard
EOY
```

This should finish with a confirmation. You can check the current PVCs with:

```
kubectl get pvc
```

…which should return something similar to:

```
NAME        STATUS   VOLUME                                     CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS   AGE
testclaim   Bound    pvc-e1d42bae-44e6-11e9-8dff-42010a840007   1Gi        RWO            gcp-standard   15s
```

This PVC can then be used by pods operating in the cluster. As an example, the following
deploys a `busybox` pod:

```
kubectl create -f - <<EOY
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: busybox
  namespace: default
spec:
  containers:
    - image: busybox
      command:
        - sleep
        - "3600"
      imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
      name: busybox
      volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: "/pv"
          name: testvolume
  restartPolicy: Always
  volumes:
    - name: testvolume
      persistentVolumeClaim:
        claimName: testclaim
EOY
```

To set this type of storage as the default, you can use the command:

```
kubectl patch storageclass gcp-standard -p '{"metadata": {"annotations":{"storageclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class":"true"}}}'
```

Note:
If you create persistent disks and subsequently tear down the cluster, check
with the GCP console to make sure all the associated resources have also been released.

### Using GCP Loadbalancers

With the gcp-integrator charm in place, actions which invoke a loadbalancer in
Kubernetes will automatically generate a GCP [Target Pool][target-pool] and the
relevant forwarding rules. This can be demonstrated with a simple application. Here we
will create a simple application and scale it to five pods:

```
kubectl create deployment hello-world --image=gcr.io/google-samples/node-hello:1.0
kubectl scale deployment hello-world --replicas=5
```

You can verify that the application and replicas have been created with:

```
kubectl get deployments hello-world
```

Which should return output similar to:

```
NAME              READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
hello-world      5/5               5                            5             2m38s
```

To create a target pool load balancer, the application should now be exposed as
a service:

```
kubectl expose deployment hello-world --type=LoadBalancer --name=hello --port 8080
```

To check that the service is running correctly:

```
kubectl describe service hello
```

…which should return output similar to:

```
Name:                     hello
Namespace:                default
Labels:                   run=load-balancer-example
Annotations:              <none>
Selector:                 run=load-balancer-example
Type:                     LoadBalancer
IP:                       10.152.183.63
LoadBalancer Ingress:     34.76.144.215
Port:                     <unset>  8080/TCP
TargetPort:               8080/TCP
NodePort:                 <unset>  31864/TCP
Endpoints:                10.1.54.11:8080,10.1.54.12:8080,10.1.54.13:8080 + 2 more...
Session Affinity:         None
External Traffic Policy:  Cluster
Events:
  Type    Reason                Age    From                Message
  ----    ------                ----   ----                -------
  Normal  EnsuringLoadBalancer  9m21s  service-controller  Ensuring load balancer
  Normal  EnsuredLoadBalancer   7m37s  service-controller  Ensured load balancer
```

You can see that the `LoadBalancer Ingress` is now associated with a new
ingress address in front of the five endpoints of the example deployment. You
can test this address:

```
curl 34.76.144.215:8080
```

```
Hello Kubernetes!
```

### Upgrading the integrator-charm

The gcp-integrator is not specifically tied to the version of **Charmed Kubernetes** installed and may
generally be upgraded at any time with the following command:

```
juju upgrade-charm gcp-integrator
```

### Troubleshooting

If you have any specific problems with the gcp-integrator, you can report bugs on
[Launchpad][bugs].

Any activity in GCP can be monitored from the [Operations][operations] console.
If you are using a service account with IAM roles, it is relatively easy to see
the actions that particular account is responsible for.

For logs of what the charm itself believes the world to look like, you can use
Juju to replay the log history for that specific unit:

```
juju debug-log --replay --include gcp-integrator/0
```

---

[Help improve this document in the forum](https://discourse.charmhub.io/t/gcp-integrator-docs-index/6318) ([guidelines](https://discourse.charmhub.io/t/how-to-write-docs-our-documentation-guidelines-for-contributors/1245)). Last updated 3 years ago.