GCP Landing Zone and GKE Platform Deployment for Shared Services
Designed and deployed a GCP platform foundation for shared services and containerized applications, with emphasis on network structure, workload identity, security controls, and repeatable GKE delivery.
Technical Implementation
- Built the landing zone around folders, projects, Shared VPC, subnet segmentation, Cloud NAT, and IAM boundaries so application and shared-service environments could be provisioned with clearer separation and fewer one-off networking decisions.
- Deployed GKE as the shared Kubernetes runtime and used Workload Identity Federation for GKE so workloads could access Google Cloud APIs without long-lived service account keys embedded in the cluster.
- Integrated Secret Manager through the GKE Secret Manager add-on for mounted application secrets, and applied Cloud Armor and HTTPS load balancing patterns so ingress security and certificate handling were part of the platform design rather than an afterthought.
- Implemented the platform with Terraform and Git-based promotion, then validated cluster onboarding, secret mounts, workload identity access, log and metric ingestion into Cloud Monitoring and Cloud Logging, and application exposure through staged lower-environment rollouts before production release.
Client Delivery & Handover
The engagement was delivered with the client platform and engineering teams through design workshops, paired Terraform and GKE implementation sessions, and rollout checkpoints tied to real workload onboarding. Handover included landing-zone diagrams, Shared VPC and identity guidance, GKE operating runbooks, workload onboarding notes, and training sessions for both platform operators and application teams so the environment could be extended without losing consistency.
Outcome
The client gained a more structured GCP operating model, a production-ready GKE foundation for shared services, and a platform architecture that supported cleaner onboarding and more predictable operations.
Project Snapshot
Category
Cloud Architecture
Sector
GCP Architecture
Duration
18 weeks
Next Step
If this project is close to the work your team is planning, Ideamics can discuss comparable architectural decisions, delivery sequencing, and implementation tradeoffs in more detail.