gcpIs Google Kubernetes Engine down?
Last 90 days
100% uptime · 0 incidentsWhat Google Kubernetes Engine does - and how it fails
Google Kubernetes Engine runs the managed control plane your clusters depend on - the API server, scheduler, and etcd. The critical nuance: the GKE SLA covers the control plane, not your workloads. Well-built clusters keep serving traffic through control-plane incidents; what breaks is deploys, autoscaling, and anything that calls the Kubernetes API on its hot path.
- Kubernetes API errors or timeouts (kubectl hangs, CI/CD deploys fail) while pods keep running
- Stuck cluster operations: node-pool upgrades, cluster creation, or repairs not progressing
- Autoscaler paralysis - HPA/cluster-autoscaler can’t act because the control plane is degraded
- Node-pool level problems in one zone (node registration failures, workload rescheduling storms)
Google Kubernetes Engine questions
Is GKE down right now?
The live pill above reflects our latest check. GKE incidents are usually control-plane scoped: if kubectl fails but your Services still answer traffic, that pattern is exactly a control-plane event - your data plane is fine.
My pods are running but kubectl times out - is that a GKE outage?
Very likely, yes - and it is the most common GKE failure mode. The control plane (API server) is a Google-managed regional or zonal component. Workloads on the nodes continue serving; deploys, scaling actions, and operators that watch the API are what stall.
What does the GKE SLA actually cover?
A regional cluster’s control plane carries a 99.95% monthly uptime SLA (zonal control planes are 99.5%). It covers Kubernetes API availability - not your pods, nodes, or application traffic. Workload availability is your architecture’s job: multi-zone node pools, PodDisruptionBudgets, and not depending on the API server at request time.
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