In this section, you’ll learn how to enable the Google Compute Engine (GCE) cloud provider for custom clusters in Rancher. A custom cluster is one in which Rancher installs Kubernetes on existing nodes.

The official Kubernetes documentation for the GCE cloud provider is here.

Prerequisites: The service account of Identity and API access on GCE needs the Computer Admin permission.

If you are using Calico,

1. Go to the cluster view in the Rancher UI, and click ⋮ > Edit.

2. Click Edit as YAML, and enter the following configuration:

   rancher_kubernetes_engine_config:
     cloud_provider:
       name: gce
       customCloudProvider: |- 
         [Global]
         project-id=<your project ID, optional>
         network-name=<your network, optional if using default network>
         subnetwork-name=<your subnetwork of the above network, optional if using default network>
         node-instance-prefix=<your instance group name/your instance name specific prefix, required>
         node-tags=<your network tags, must patch one or some tags, required>
     network:
       options: 
         calico_cloud_provider: "gce"
       plugin: "calico"

If you are using Canal or Flannel,

1. Go to the cluster view in the Rancher UI, and click ⋮ > Edit.

2. Click Edit as YAML, and enter the following configuration:

   rancher_kubernetes_engine_config:
     cloud_provider: 
       name: gce
       customCloudProvider: |- 
         [Global]
         project-id=<your project ID, optional>
         network-name=<your network, optional if using default network>
         subnetwork-name=<your subnetwork of the above network, optional if using default network>
         node-instance-prefix=<your instance group name/your instance name specific prefix, required>
         node-tags=<your network tags, must patch one or some tags, required>
     services: 
       kube_controller: 
         extra_args:
           configure-cloud-routes: true # we need to allow the cloud provider configure the routes for the hosts