The example below creates a Kubernetes cluster with 4 worker node Virtual Machines and a master Virtual Machine (i.e. 5 VMs in your cluster). This cluster is set up and controlled from your workstation (or wherever you find convenient).
If you want a simplified getting started experience and GUI for managing clusters, please consider trying [Google Container Engine](https://cloud.google.com/container-engine/) (GKE) for hosted cluster installation and management.
1. You need a Google Cloud Platform account with billing enabled. Visit the [Google Developers Console](http://cloud.google.com/console) for more details.
1. Then, make sure you have the `gcloud preview` command line component installed. Run `gcloud preview` at the command line - if it asks to install any components, go ahead and install them. If it simply shows help text, you're good to go. This is required as the cluster setup script uses GCE [Instance Groups](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instance-groups/), which are in the gcloud preview namespace. You will also need to **enable [`Compute Engine Instance Group Manager API`](https://developers.google.com/console/help/new/#activatingapis)** in the developers console.
1. Make sure that gcloud is set to use the Google Cloud Platform project you want. You can check the current project using `gcloud config list project` and change it via `gcloud config set project <project-id>`.
1. Make sure you can start up a GCE VM from the command line. At least make sure you can do the [Create an instance](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/#startinstancegcloud) part of the GCE Quickstart.
1. Make sure you can ssh into the VM without interactive prompts. See the [Log in to the instance](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/#sshing) part of the GCE Quickstart.
By default, some containers will already be running on your cluster. Containers like `kibana` and `elasticsearch` provide [logging](logging.md), while `heapster` provides [monitoring](../../cluster/addons/cluster-monitoring/README.md) services.
The script run by the commands above creates a cluster with the name/prefix "kubernetes". It defines one specific cluster config, so you can't run it more than once.
Alternately, you can download and install the latest Kubernetes release from [this page](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes/releases), then run the `<kubernetes>/cluster/kube-up.sh` script to start the cluster:
If you want more than one cluster running in your project, want to use a different name, or want a different number of worker nodes, see the `<kubernetes>/cluster/gce/config-default.sh` file for more fine-grained configuration before you start up your cluster.
The [kubectl](../user-guide/kubectl/kubectl.md) tool controls the Kubernetes cluster manager. It lets you inspect your cluster resources, create, delete, and update components, and much more.
Some of the pods may take a few seconds to start up (during this time they'll show `Pending`), but check that they all show as `Running` after a short period.
For more complete applications, please look in the [examples directory](../../examples/). The [guestbook example](../../examples/guestbook/) is a good "getting started" walkthrough.
Likewise, the `kube-up.sh` in the same directory will bring it back up. You do not need to rerun the `curl` or `wget` command: everything needed to setup the Kubernetes cluster is now on your workstation.
Also ensure that-- as listed in the [Prerequsites section](#prerequisites)-- you've enabled the `Compute Engine Instance Group Manager API`, and can start up a GCE VM from the command line as in the [GCE Quickstart](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/quickstart) instructions.
If the Kubernetes startup script hangs waiting for the API to be reachable, you can troubleshoot by SSHing into the master and node VMs and looking at logs such as `/var/log/startupscript.log`.
