<p>I have a GKE cluster I'm trying to switch the default node machine type on.</p>

<p>I have already tried:</p>

<ol>
<li>Creating a new node pool with the machine type I want</li>
<li>Deleting the default-pool. GKE will process for a bit, then not remove the default-pool. I assume this is some undocumented behavior where you cannot delete the default-pool.</li>
</ol>

<p>I'd prefer to not re-create the cluster and re-apply all of my deployments/secrets/configs/etc.</p>

<p>k8s version: <code>1.14.10-gke.24</code> (Stable channel)</p>

<p>Cluster Type: Regional</p>

<p>The best approach to change/increase/decrease your <code>node pool</code> specification would be with: </p>

<ul>
<li><strong>Migration</strong> </li>
</ul>

<p>To migrate your workloads without incurring downtime, you need to:</p>

<ul>
<li>Create a new <code>node pool</code>. </li>
<li>Mark the existing <code>node pool</code> as unschedulable.</li>
<li>Drain the workloads running on the existing <code>node pool</code>.</li>
<li><strong>Check if the workload is running correctly on a new <code>node pool</code>.</strong></li>
<li>Delete the existing <code>node pool</code>.</li>
</ul>

<p>Your workload will be scheduled automatically onto a new <code>node pool</code>. </p>

<blockquote>
  <p><a href="https://kubernetes.io/" rel="noreferrer">Kubernetes</a>, which is the cluster orchestration system of GKE clusters, automatically reschedules the evicted <a href="https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/pods/pod/" rel="noreferrer">Pods</a> to the new node pool as it drains the existing node pool.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>There is official documentation about migrating your workload: </p>

<blockquote>
  <p>This tutorial demonstrates how to migrate workloads running on a GKE cluster to a new set of nodes within the same cluster without incurring downtime for your application. Such a migration can be useful if you want to migrate your workloads to nodes with a different machine type.</p>
  
  <p>-- <em><a href="https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/tutorials/migrating-node-pool" rel="noreferrer">GKE: Migrating workloads to different machine types</a></em>  </p>
</blockquote>

<p>Please take a look at above guide and let me know if you have any questions in that topic. </p>
