I definitely don't want this to come off as a sales pitch, but you can get started in one click using Google Container Engine (and $300 in free credit) as well.
Except: "Sorry, you aren't eligible for a free trial at this time. The free trial is for new customers only."
Apparently, the fact that I've been curious enough to experiment with other Google developer products in the past means I'm not part of the target audience.
Yeah, sorry if that came off as snarky; I appreciate the suggestion.
I guess I can understand the cost-cutting mentality that drives Google, AWS, etc. to limit these kinds of offers to "new customers" only. Just remember to consider what kind of incentives you're creating. By effectively punishing developers for being early adopters/experimenters, you're making them wary of signing up early for whatever new and interesting stuff you announce in the future.
It's an interesting problem - the issue is that our trials are both money & time based ($300 for 60 days). So technically you've "used" your trial even if you do nothing for 2 months.
We do appreciate the feedback and are looking hard at the right next way to solve this. If it wasn't for bitcoin miners and/or bot nets, this would all be a lot easier :(
Got a fairly quick response from Google Cloud Billing Support:
"Unfortunately, the system is developed by design to only apply the free trial credit to new email address creating a new billing account and we can't apply it for already existing emails." Bummer.
I actually find this a common issue with a presumed sales pipeline I encounter.
They think:
1. He finds us.
2. He's interested and signs up for a trial
3. We hopefully convert before the trial is over
What actually tends to happen
1. I find something that looks interesting
2. I sign up
3. Real work intervenes
4. Several months later I have some time to look again but my trial has expired.
To be fair most companies respond to a quick email but they could be proactive and do the following:
1. If no activity is detected after the first day pause the trial
2. Some time later send an email saying "We've paused your trial. Please choose either: 1. to reactivate it, 2. be reminded in another x weeks or 3. never hear from us again.
We were looking at this, but noticed that you have to one run cluster per availability zone. Any plans for being able to run a cluster across an entire region within GCE?
FWIW, I'd love to have Kubernetes clusters spanning a region with multiple regions/providers managed by Ubernetes. That would be the sweet spot for our particular usage case.
This is only one point of data for you, of course.
"Today, each Kubernetes cluster is a relatively self-contained unit, which typically runs in a single "on-premise" data centre or single availability zone of a cloud provider (Google's GCE, Amazon's AWS, etc)."
Agreed. That's the only reason we're not on Kubernetes right now. It really dramatically increases the amount of infrastructure we need to run when we're forced to run three Kubernetes clusters to run a single MongoDB replica set. But I love everything else Kubernetes is doing and so I'm very anxious to see that be addressed.
Apparently, the fact that I've been curious enough to experiment with other Google developer products in the past means I'm not part of the target audience.