Previously, for a few items, you may have noticed the Kubernetes Engine option. That's where we're heading to prepare our cluster:

You'll be asked to create a new cluster. Choose the default options, or change the ones you want to try out, and create a cluster for our microservice to run on:

We now have a Kubernetes cluster of three nodes to run our microservice. In the top-right corner of the screen, you'll find one important icon, which is the Google Cloud Shell icon:

If you click on it, a console will open that gives you access to your platform using a terminal. You can do all kinds of stuff, such as monitoring containers, and checking connectivity:

This is a normal console, but with the gcloud and kubectl commands already installed. You can have those installed locally and manage your clusters remotely, or just access this console to make a quick change or checkup.