For any migration or disaster recovery (DR) activity, the first step is to discover the cluster in SWIFT. Discovery allows SWIFT to identify and register the cluster along with its associated resources such as namespaces, workloads, and other objects. Only after the cluster is successfully discovered, you can proceed with operations like syncing applications, or performing the actual migration or failover tasks. 


Pre-requisite: 

1. To discover the GKE cluster, you must have a cluster created in the GCP cloud and know the region where the cluster is deployed. 

2. To add a GKE cluster in SWIFT, you need a service account key for authentication. The detailed steps to create the service account and generate the key are already covered in the Adding Google GCP service-account for SWIFT use section in our Pre-requisite and installation guide. 

or

You can download the installation and prerequisite guide from the SWIFT dashboard to create credentials for the GCP cluster. The screenshot below is for your reference. 




Following are steps to discover the GCP cluster.


1. Login to the ‘SWIFT’ dashboard and navigate to the ‘Container Cluster’ menu and click on ‘Add’ button. You can check below screenshot for your reference.


2. Once you click on the ‘Add’ button, a Cluster Add modal/dialog will be displayed. You need to provide the cluster details to be discovered. You can refer to the screenshot below for reference. 




Field NameField Description
Platform typeSelect the platform where your cluster is running

 Friendly name 
You need to enter a friendly name according to your cluster or project. 

Cloud Type 
Choose the ‘cloud type’ from the dropdown, in this case it is Google GCP.

Cluster Name
Enter the GKE cluster name that you created in google cloud.
RegionChoose the region from the provided list that matches the region of your GKE cluster.

 Private key File
Click on the button to browse your local system and select the private key file (e.g., gcp-key.json). Know More
TRAIPOD ConfigThis is an optional input. They can be configured for each sync, and the values input for the sync will override the defaults set for the cluster. For more info you can look TRAIPOD KB article. 

To more know about Traipod Config section, Please follow below KB Article.

traipod-config

Cluster private IP configNormally, the IP address or hostname mentioned in the kubeconfig file is used to discover the cluster. However, if you want to set up a private IP or hostname to access the cluster, and the public IP mentioned in the kubeconfig is not used, this setting can be used to overwrite the default kubeconfig IP with the private IP and port.



3. Now, click the Add button. Within a few seconds, the GKE cluster will be added. 


4.Once the cluster is discovered, you can view all information about the cluster and its metadata. Simply click on the cluster to expand it and view the details. Refer to the screenshot below for guidance. 

 

        - When you go to the Summary tab, you will find information about the cluster, such as its creation date, GCP cluster name, API server port, Kubernetes version, and more. 


       - When you go to the Namespace tab, you will see all the namespaces created in the cluster, including the default namespaces provided by GCP. Please see below screenshot.



       - When you go to the Kubernetes Objects tab, you can view the objects running in your namespace. Simply select the object type from the Object Type tab and choose the namespace from the dropdown. This will display the objects running in that namespace on the cluster. In the screenshot below, you can see that two pods are running in the demo-dest-app namespace.



4. Once the cluster is discovered, you will have access to additional operations. You can perform the following actions on the selected cluster. 



- Re-Discover : This option allows you to re-discover the cluster. If you have added new namespaces or applications to the cloud cluster and want them to be reflected in the SWIFT portal, you can re-discover the cluster.


- Configure : Use this option if you want to modify the cluster configuration. Please check KB Article on 'Configure the cluster'

    How to configure the cluster

 

- Delete : Use this option to delete the cluster. However, ensure that no DR Policy is attached to the cluster; otherwise, the cluster cannot be deleted and the Delete option will be disabled. It will delete from SWIFT dashboard only not from cloud.


What next:


-Now that the clusters are discovered, you may want to set up a Migration or Disaster Recovery (DR) job. Then follow below KB links.


How to do Passthrough sync

How to do Stage sync



Related KB's


How to create DR Policy 

DR policy for stage1+2 sync