GCP PlayCloud Labs Guided Lab: Deploying a Simple Web Application on GKE

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Guided Lab: Deploying a Simple Web Application on GKE

Jon-Bonso

Description

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) allows you to run containerized applications in a managed Kubernetes environment. One of the best ways to understand how Kubernetes works is by deploying a simple application and observing how it runs inside a cluster.

In this guided lab, you’ll deploy a basic Hello World web application to an existing GKE cluster. You’ll create a Kubernetes Deployment to run the container and expose it using a Service so it can be accessed from a web browser. This lab provides hands-on experience with core Kubernetes concepts such as pods, deployments, and services.

Prerequisites

This lab assumes you have already created a Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster and are familiar with its basic components.

If you find any gaps in your knowledge, consider taking the following labs:

Objectives

In this lab, you will:

Deploy a simple Hello World container to a GKE cluster
Create a Kubernetes Deployment to manage the application
Expose the application using a Service
Access the application from a web browser

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Lab Steps

Navigating to a GKE Cluster

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the unified search bar at the top.

2. Type “Kubernetes” and select Kubernetes Engine from the results.

3. Click Clusters to view the list of available GKE clusters. Select the cluster that you want to connect to.

Connecting to the GKE Cluster

1. On the cluster details page, click Connect at the top of the page.

2. In the connection dialog, choose Run in Cloud Shell

3. You will be prompted to authorize Cloud Shell. Click Authorize, then enter the username and password of the account you are currently using.

4. Run the command to configure your local environment with the cluster’s credentials, allowing kubectl to access and manage the GKE cluster.

Deploying the Hello World Application

1. In Cloud Shell, deploy a simple Hello World container using the following command:

kubectl create deployment hello-world --image=gcr.io/google-samples/hello-app:1.0

2. Verify that the Deployment was created successfully:

kubectl get deployments

3. Verify that the pod is running:

kubectl get pods

Exposing and Accessing the Application

1. Expose the Deployment using a LoadBalancer Service:

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

2. Verify that the Service was created:

kubectl get services

3. Wait a few minutes for an EXTERNAL-IP address to be assigned.

Here, you can see initially that the EXTERNAL-IP address for the hello-world application is <pending>. Wait for a few minutes, then enter again kubectl get services until it has an assigned value on EXTERNAL-IP.

4. Once the external IP is available, copy the IP address from the Service output.

5. Open a new browser tab and paste the IP address, followed by port 8080.
<EXTERNAL-IP>:8080

You should see a Hello World message displayed in the browser, confirming that the application is running successfully on GKE.

Well done! You’ve successfully deployed a simple Hello World web application to your Google Kubernetes Engine cluster and exposed it for external access. This guided lab helps you understand the basic workflow of deploying and running containerized applications on GKE. You can use the same deployment and service concepts covered in this lab to build and run more complex applications with multiple components. In future guided labs, we’ll build on this foundation by updating applications, scaling workloads, and exploring Kubernetes features such as self-healing, monitoring, and networking.