<p>I noticed every node in a cluster has an external IP assigned to it. That seems to be the default behavior of Google Kubernetes Engine.</p>

<p>I thought the nodes in my cluster should be reachable from the local network only (through its virtual IPs), but I could even connect directly to a mongo server running on a pod from my home computer just by connecting to its hosting node (without using a LoadBalancer).</p>

<p>I tried to make Container Engine not to assign external IPs to newly created nodes by changing the cluster instance template settings (changing property "External IP" from "Ephemeral" to "None"). But after I did that GCE was not able to start any pods (Got "Does not have minimum availability" error). The new instances did not even show in the list of nodes in my cluster. </p>

<p>After switching back to the default instance template with external IP everything went fine again. So it seems for some reason Google Kubernetes Engine requires cluster nodes to be public.</p>

<p>Could you explain why is that and whether there is a way to prevent GKE exposing cluster nodes to the Internet? Should I set up a firewall? What rules should I use (since nodes are dynamically created)?</p>

<p>I think Google not allowing private nodes is kind of a security issue... Suppose someone discovers a security hole on a database management system. We'd feel much more comfortable to work on fixing that (applying patches, upgrading versions) if our database nodes are not exposed to the Internet.</p>

<p>GKE recently added a new feature allowing you to create <a href="https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/how-to/private-clusters" rel="nofollow noreferrer">private clusters</a>, which are clusters where nodes do not have public IP addresses. </p>
