Creating cluster without clusterctl

This document describes how to create a management cluster and workload cluster without using clusterctl. For creating a cluster with clusterctl, checkout our Cluster API Quick Start

For creating a Management cluster

  1. Build required images by using the following commands:

    • docker build --tag=gcr.io/k8s-staging-cluster-api-gcp/cluster-api-gcp-controller:e2e .
    • make docker-build-all
  2. Set the required environment variables. For example:

    export GCP_REGION=us-east4
    export GCP_PROJECT=k8s-staging-cluster-api-gcp
    export CONTROL_PLANE_MACHINE_COUNT=1
    export WORKER_MACHINE_COUNT=1
    export KUBERNETES_VERSION=1.21.6
    export GCP_CONTROL_PLANE_MACHINE_TYPE=n1-standard-2
    export GCP_NODE_MACHINE_TYPE=n1-standard-2
    export GCP_NETWORK_NAME=default
    export GCP_B64ENCODED_CREDENTIALS=$( cat /path/to/gcp_credentials.json | base64 | tr -d '\n' )
    export CLUSTER_NAME="capg-test"
    export IMAGE_ID=projects/k8s-staging-cluster-api-gcp/global/images/cluster-api-ubuntu-2204-v1-27-3-nightly
    

You can check for other images to set the IMAGE_ID of your choice.

  1. Run make create-management-cluster from root directory.