> Do you think management nodes are free? ... Google['s management nodes] might be free
Indeed they are. Why do you think that is?
It could be that they're a great big loss-leader for GKE, or that the costs of GKE management nodes are amortized into the per-cluster-node costs. But neither of these seem to be true. (The pricing of GKE management nodes before they made them free was negligible; and GKE nodes don't cost any more than equivalent GCE nodes.)
The real answer, I think, is that K8s management nodes really are just not all that big a deal to run. Certainly not $144/mo of a big deal.
Indeed they are. Why do you think that is?
It could be that they're a great big loss-leader for GKE, or that the costs of GKE management nodes are amortized into the per-cluster-node costs. But neither of these seem to be true. (The pricing of GKE management nodes before they made them free was negligible; and GKE nodes don't cost any more than equivalent GCE nodes.)
The real answer, I think, is that K8s management nodes really are just not all that big a deal to run. Certainly not $144/mo of a big deal.