setup-gcp

GCP Setup Tool (setup-gcp)

This tool automates the provisioning and configuration of Google Cloud Platform (GCP) resources required to run Agent Substrate. It is designed to be idempotent, meaning it can be run multiple times safely to ensure the environment is correctly configured.

Overview

The setup-gcp tool provisions and configures GCP resources for Agent Substrate. It uses a hierarchical command structure:

• setup-gcp (root)
  • enable apis - Enable required GCP APIs.
  • create - Parent command for resource creation.
    • cluster - Create GKE cluster.
    • bucket - Create GCS bucket.
    • iam - Create IAM policy bindings and grant permissions.
    • dashboards - Create Cloud Monitoring dashboards.
    • cloudsql - Create a Cloud SQL PostgreSQL instance for the ateapi store, with IAM database authentication (see cloud-sql.md).
  • bootstrap - Run all setup steps in order.

Prerequisites

1. Go: Ensure Go is installed (version compatible with the project, see root go.mod).
2. Google Cloud SDK (gcloud): Installed and authenticated.
3. Application Default Credentials (ADC): The tool uses Google Cloud client libraries. You must set up ADC:

   gcloud auth application-default login
   

4. Target Project: You must have a GCP project created and have sufficient permissions (typically Owner or Editor) to create resources like GKE clusters, GCS buckets, and IAM bindings.

Configuration & Defaults

All CLI flags can be configured via environment variables. If an environment variable is set, it will be used as the default value for the corresponding flag. Command-line flags always take precedence over environment variables.

A convenient way to manage these is to copy the example environment file, customize it, and source it before running the tool:

cp hack/ate-dev-env.sh.example .ate-dev-env.sh
# Edit .ate-dev-env.sh to match your project and preferences
source .ate-dev-env.sh

Global Flags

These flags can be passed to the root command and apply to all subcommands:

Subcommands

1. Enable APIs

Enables the required GCP APIs for the project.

go run ./tools/setup-gcp enable apis [flags]

Flags:

• (Uses global --project-id)

2. Create Cluster

Creates a GKE cluster configured for Agent Substrate (with Workload Identity, required Kubernetes beta APIs, and Managed OpenTelemetry enabled, and the Filestore CSI driver disabled).

[!WARNING] Agent Substrate requires two Kubernetes beta APIs — certificates.k8s.io/v1beta1/podcertificaterequests and certificates.k8s.io/v1beta1/clustertrustbundles — which constrains the supported GKE versions to exactly two configurations:

• GKE 1.36 with the beta APIs enabled at cluster creation. GKE only honors enableK8sBetaApis at creation time. Enabling the APIs later on an existing cluster is not recoverable in place: the tool's reconcile path issues the update, but the APIs do not become served — the cluster must be recreated with them enabled.
• GKE 1.37 or higher, where the APIs are served by default and no beta enablement is needed.

Versions below 1.36 are not supported. create cluster handles the enablement for you; if you bring your own 1.36 cluster, create it with both APIs enabled from the start, e.g.:

gcloud container clusters create "${CLUSTER_NAME}" ... \
  --enable-kubernetes-unstable-apis=certificates.k8s.io/v1beta1/podcertificaterequests,certificates.k8s.io/v1beta1/clustertrustbundles

The symptom of a cluster without the APIs: the install hangs at "Waiting for podcertificate ClusterTrustBundles to be ready" and kubectl get clustertrustbundles reports the resource type is not served.

[!WARNING] Turn node auto-upgrade off on any node pool that runs workers, and do not use spot or preemptible nodes for them. When a worker pod is deleted, SIGTERM is forwarded into the actor's containers and the control plane keeps accepting a suspend for about 60 seconds. An actor suspended inside that window keeps its state. One still awake when the window closes is moved to ACTOR_STATE_CRASHED with its worker assignment cleared, and CRASHED is terminal: resume and suspend are both refused, there is no recover verb, and the snapshot the actor still holds cannot be used to start it. The only way out is to delete the actor and create a new one, which loses its state.

Auto-upgrade is the trigger to plan for, because GKE enables it by default and it fires on Google's maintenance schedule rather than yours. create cluster does not disable it, so do it yourself on every pool that runs workers:

gcloud container node-pools update "${NODE_POOL}" \
  --cluster "${CLUSTER_NAME}" --location "${CLUSTER_LOCATION}" \
  --no-enable-autoupgrade

This is a management setting, so it takes effect without recreating nodes and is safe to apply to a serving cluster. Node auto-repair, preemption and OOM kills reach the same path and cannot be configured away, so treat the setting as removing the scheduled risk rather than all of it. Change versions through the rolling upgrade runbook, which has you suspend every actor on a node at your own pace before the node moves.

go run ./tools/setup-gcp create cluster [flags]

Flags:

Node version labels: pool labels are the birth default for every node GKE creates later (autoscaling, auto-repair, node upgrades), and setup-gcp does not set ate.dev/substrate-version on the pool, so those nodes arrive unlabeled and run no dataplane pods (see the README's note on node version labels). Stamp the pool with gcloud container node-pools update ... --node-labels=... (list the existing labels first and carry them all over; the flag replaces the full set), and create additional pools with --node-labels=ate.dev/substrate-version=<build version>.

3. Create Bucket

Creates a GCS bucket for storing snapshots.

go run ./tools/setup-gcp create bucket [flags]

Flags:

*Note: Required unless the BUCKET_NAME environment variable is set.

4. Create IAM

Configures IAM permissions and Workload Identity bindings.

go run ./tools/setup-gcp create iam [flags]

Flags:

*Note: Required for bucket bindings unless the BUCKET_NAME environment variable is set.

What create iam actually grants

On a fresh GCP project these bindings do not exist, and nothing else creates them — without them atelet cannot read or write external snapshots (403 from GCS on the first suspend/resume), ate-api cannot copy or collect them, and nodes cannot pull images. bootstrap and create iam apply them for you; the table below is the reference for auditing them, or for applying them by hand in projects where you cannot run the tool with project-level IAM permissions.

atelet and ate-api authenticate via GKE Workload Identity Federation: their Kubernetes ServiceAccounts (ate-system/atelet and ate-system/ate-api-server, created by install-ate.sh) are addressed directly as IAM principals — no Google service account is created or impersonated. This only works on a cluster with Workload Identity enabled (create cluster enables the PROJECT_ID.svc.id.goog pool; a pre-existing cluster must have it enabled too, or their GCS calls fail with 401).

¹ principal://iam.googleapis.com/projects/PROJECT_NUMBER/locations/global/workloadIdentityPools/PROJECT_ID.svc.id.goog/subject/ns/ate-system/sa/SERVICE_ACCOUNT — note it is keyed to the project number, not the ID. ² Project-level today; scoping these down is tracked in the TODOs in cmd/iam.go. ³ PROJECT_NUMBER-compute@developer.gserviceaccount.com (least-privileged node SA is #76).

Manual equivalent:

WI="principal://iam.googleapis.com/projects/${PROJECT_NUMBER}/locations/global/workloadIdentityPools/${PROJECT_ID}.svc.id.goog/subject/ns/ate-system/sa"
ATELET="${WI}/atelet"
ATE_API="${WI}/ate-api-server"

gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding "${PROJECT_ID}" \
  --member="${ATELET}" --role=roles/storage.objectAdmin
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding "${PROJECT_ID}" \
  --member="${ATELET}" --role=roles/artifactregistry.reader
for MEMBER in "${ATELET}" "${ATE_API}"; do
  gcloud storage buckets add-iam-policy-binding "gs://${BUCKET_NAME}" \
    --member="${MEMBER}" --role=roles/storage.objectAdmin
  gcloud storage buckets add-iam-policy-binding "gs://${BUCKET_NAME}" \
    --member="${MEMBER}" --role=roles/storage.bucketViewer
done

5. Create Dashboards

Creates or updates Cloud Monitoring dashboards.

go run ./tools/setup-gcp create dashboards [flags]

Flags:

6. Bootstrap (All Steps)

Runs all the setup steps in the correct order to fully bootstrap the environment.

go run ./tools/setup-gcp bootstrap [flags]

Flags:

*Note: Required unless the BUCKET_NAME environment variable is set.

Examples

Run the tool from the repository root to ensure relative paths to dashboard configurations are resolved correctly.

Bootstrap everything using environment variables

If you have sourced your .ate-dev-env.sh:

go run ./tools/setup-gcp bootstrap

Bootstrap everything overriding some values

go run ./tools/setup-gcp bootstrap \
  --cluster-name="custom-cluster" \
  --machine-type="n2-standard-8"

Only create the cluster (using env vars for defaults)

go run ./tools/setup-gcp create cluster