GKE Cost Allocation

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Consider Using the CloudZero Agent for Kubernetes

We recommend using the CloudZero Agent for Kubernetes to get the clearest view of your Kubernetes costs. The CloudZero Agent is cloud-agnostic and offers more features, whereas Google Cloud's GKE Cost Allocation is more limited.

For users managing workloads in Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), CloudZero offers integrated support to capture and analyze your cost data using Google Cloud's GKE Cost Allocation feature.

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GKE Cost Allocation Limitations

Currently, Google Cloud's GKE Cost Allocation feature does not account for Flexible Committed Use Discounts. As a result, the cost data shown in CloudZero may not reflect these discounts.

Additionally, GKE Cost Allocation cannot ingest resource usage data, and as a result, it cannot calculate idle cluster costs.

Enable GKE Cost Allocation in Google Cloud

To enable CloudZero to integrate with GKE Cost Allocation, you must activate the GKE Cost Allocation feature in Google Cloud.

Prerequisites:

• An existing GCP Billing connection in CloudZero
• Permissions in Google Cloud to create or modify GKE clusters

Repeat the following processes for each cluster where you plan to activate GKE Cost Allocation.

• To enable GKE Cost Allocation on an existing cluster, see Update a cluster in the Google Cloud documentation.
• To enable GKE Cost Allocation when you create a new cluster, see Create a new cluster in the Google Cloud documentation.

The GKE Cost Allocation data will be available in CloudZero after the next billing ingest for the associated GCP project. Note that this can take up to 3 days.

View GKE Cost Allocation in CloudZero

After CloudZero has processed your GKE Cost Allocation data, you can view it in CloudZero. For example, the following image shows GCP cost data grouped by Kubernetes cluster: