<p>We are unable to grab logs from our GKE cluster running containers if StackDriver is disabled on GCP. I understand that it is proxying stderr/stdout but it seems rather heavy handed to block these outputs when Stackdriver is disabled.</p>

<p>How does one get an ELF stack going on GKE without being billed for StackDriver aka disabling it entirely? or is it so much a part of GKE that this is not doable?</p>

<p>From the article linked on a similar question regarding GCP:</p>

<p>"Kubernetes doesn’t specify a logging agent, but two optional logging agents are packaged with the Kubernetes release: Stackdriver Logging for use with Google Cloud Platform, and Elasticsearch. You can find more information and instructions in the dedicated documents. Both use fluentd with custom configuration as an agent on the node." (<a href="https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/cluster-administration/logging/#exposing-logs-directly-from-the-application" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/cluster-administration/logging/#exposing-logs-directly-from-the-application</a>) </p>

<p>Perhaps our understanding of Stackdriver billing is wrong? </p>

<p>But we don't want to be billed for Stackdriver as the 150MB of logs outside of the GCP metrics is not going to be enough and we have some expertise in setting up ELF for logging that we'd like to use. </p>

<p>You can disable Stackdriver logging/monitoring on Kubernetes by editing your cluster, and setting "Stackdriver Logging" and "Stackdriver Monitoring" to disable.</p>

<p>I would still suggest sticking to GCP over AWS as you get the whole Kube as a service experience. Amazon's solution is still a little way off, and they are planning charging for the service in addition to the EC2 node prices (Last I heard).</p>
