<p>This describes how one would install the agent on a regular gce instance:
<a href="https://cloud.google.com/monitoring/agent/install-agent" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://cloud.google.com/monitoring/agent/install-agent</a></p>

<p>Previously the cluster ran on debian os nodes and we'd have the agent running to monitor cpu, disk space etc. now it's upgraded to kubernetes 1.4 and running on container-optimized os (<a href="https://cloud.google.com/container-optimized-os/docs/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://cloud.google.com/container-optimized-os/docs/</a>) the agent can't be installed manually. </p>

<p>I realise pods are monitored automatically, but that's only part of the picture.</p>

<p>I feel like I'm missing something here as this it'd be a big backward step for this not to be possible.</p>

<p>I've ran into the same thing several times. You have to switch back to the <code>container-vm</code> format in order to install the stackdriver agent.</p>

<p><code>gcloud container clusters upgrade --image-type=container_vm [CLUSTER_NAME]</code> </p>

<p>That should flip it back. You can install the agent once the images flip. We're running 1.4.7 on the <code>container-vm</code> image and haven't seen any issues. Seems like overhead but not an actual step-back if that helps.</p>
