Faster GKE node pool auto-creation

We’re excited to announce concurrency in Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) node pool auto-creation, to significantly reduce provisioning latency and autoscaling performance. Internal benchmarks show up to an 85% improvement in provisioning speed, especially benefiting heterogeneous workloads, multi-tenant clusters, workloads that use multiple ComputeClass priorities, and large AI training workloads, by cutting deployment time and enhancing goodput. The improvements are already under the hood when you allow GKE to automatically create node pools for pending Pods.

The problem

GKE node pools take nodes with identical configurations and group them, unifying operations such as resizing and upgrading. A new empty node pool takes 30-45 seconds to create. GKE can automate node-pool creation based on Pod resource needs. 

Compare this to prior versions of GKE node auto-provisioning (NAP), which executed one operation at a time, leading to increased deployment and scaling latencies. This was particularly noticeable in clusters that needed multiple node pools; the 30-45 seconds it took to create each new node pool really added up, impacting the cluster’s overall autoscaling responsiveness. During the time a node pool was being created, other node pool operations had to wait.

GKE node pool auto-creation is core to Autopilot mode, whether you’re using it with an Autopilot or Standard cluster; optionally, you can also use it if you’re operating in GKE Standard mode. Any time a new virtual machine (VM) shape is added by Autopilot, a node pool is created under the hood.

The solution

Support for node pool concurrency allows the system to handle multiple operations at the same time, so clusters can be deployed and scale out to different node types much faster. The improvement is available starting from version 1.34.1-gke.1829001. To benefit from this improvement, simply upgrade to the latest version of GKE, no additional configuration is required.