Network Configuration

spec.clusterNetwork on GCPManagedControlPlane also controls two GKE cluster-networking features: the datapath provider (Dataplane V2) and the in-cluster DNS provider.

Datapath provider (Dataplane V2)

datapathProvider selects the implementation of the Kubernetes networking model GKE uses for service resolution and network policy enforcement:

apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: GCPManagedControlPlane
metadata:
  name: my-cluster
spec:
  clusterNetwork:
    datapathProvider: advanced

datapathProvider accepts:

• advanced — GKE Dataplane V2, an eBPF-based dataplane. This is Google’s recommended default for new clusters.
• legacy — the IPTables-based implementation built on kube-proxy.

Omitting datapathProvider leaves GKE’s default in place. This field is immutable once the cluster is created — GKE does not support switching datapath providers on an existing cluster. It also cannot be set when enableAutopilot is true: Autopilot clusters always use Dataplane V2.

Cluster DNS

dnsConfig chooses which DNS provider serves in-cluster DNS records:

apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: GCPManagedControlPlane
metadata:
  name: my-cluster
spec:
  clusterNetwork:
    dnsConfig:
      clusterDNS: cloud-dns
      clusterDNSScope: cluster
      clusterDNSDomain: cluster.local

• clusterDNS — platform (GKE’s default), cloud-dns, or kube-dns.
• clusterDNSScope — cluster (records resolvable from within the cluster only) or vpc (records resolvable from anywhere in the VPC). Only meaningful with clusterDNS: cloud-dns.
• clusterDNSDomain — the suffix used for cluster service records.

dnsConfig is mutable — you can change its contents on an existing cluster. However, once set it cannot be removed entirely; there’s no clean way to revert to “no DNS config” once GKE has one configured.