Pokémon GO as an example of what you can do with Kubernetes and Google Cloud Platform

If you downloaded the Pokémon GO app directly at its launch by mid june of this year, you might have encountered several problems while registering to the online game or logging in or server unavailabilty for some minutes. As an expert for server or cloud infrastructure and the hype around the release of Pokémon GO one might have already guessed what chaos was going on in the backend infrastructure.

50times the estimated payload

In a Google Cloud Platform Blogpost the Director of Customer Reliability Engineering, Luke Stone, said, that the original estimation before launch of Pokémon GO was overthrown within the first hours after it went public, starting with Australia and New Zealand. As even the worst case scenarios went obsolete before the game app was to be published to the US the next day  Pokémon GO creator Niantec (on behalf of Nintendo, Japan) and Google's CRE (Customer Reliability Engineering) Team had to face the emerging problems in backend structure. So far, they did quite well: Servers were unavailable only for short periods and some Problems with logi and registering were under control within a week. This is respectable, since they had to rescale and redesign parts of their infrastructure in real time in a live scenario with millions of gamers rushing in to download and register to the most hyped game this year.

The traffic grew to 50x the original estimation - it was even 10x the estimated worst case scenario (!) within a very short time.

Kubernetes and Google Container Engine are the backbone of Pokémon GO's infrastructure

Pokémon GO is running on the Google Container Engine making use of GKE's cluster orchestration based on open source Kubernetes Containers. Besides using many Google Cloud Platform Services, the GCP Cloud Datastore is also business critical, since it is used as the primary database for building up Pokémon GO's augmented reality foundation (real streetmaps with virtual Pokemons jumping around).

Niantec chose the Google Container Engine to orchestrate Kubernetes Container Cluster in a global scale, so the developers could focus on updating and deploying the game while the user base grew.

Update of Google Container Engine and Load Balancers

Even to Google the launch of Pokémon GO was an experiment on unkonwn terrain. Never had an App mobilized so many users in such a short time - they had to update some core Elements of the GKE to guarantee a sufficient Kubernetes Container on demand provisioning rate, before Go Live at Nintendo's home base Japan.

Google's CRE team itself calls it "a true test if there ever was one!" although there have been numerous product launches on  Google Cloud Platform with millions of users, but normally growing over severaly months at a linear rate.

But all Applications running on Google Cloud Platform will benefit from this record breaking launch of Pokémon GO, since changes to the Container Engine and even the Network Load Balancer will set free new potential.

Your Project on Kubernetes and Google Cloud Platform

If you are planning an Application Project in the Cloud - it does not neccessarily have to be the size of Pokémon GO - you could learn from this excellent example what can happen in real life scenarios and be prepared. Why not integrate cloud experts and consultants to your core team, when starting from scratch? It's just a phone call away and might save you a lot of time to market and money! Contac us, if you are planning to deploy on Kubernetes or the Google Cloud Platform!