# GKE Sandbox (gVisor and microVM)

> Google Kubernetes Engine's sandboxed Pods for untrusted and agent-generated code: gVisor, or (GA since 2026-10-07) Kata Containers microVMs on Cloud Hypervisor.

- id: `gke-sandbox`
- category: Infrastructure (`infrastructure`)
- url: https://docs.cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/concepts/sandbox-pods
- docs: https://docs.cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/how-to/sandbox-pods
- status: active
- pricing: paid
- license: proprietary
- tags: sandbox, kubernetes, microvm, gvisor, isolation
- related: gVisor (https://indexagentica.com/entries/gvisor/); Agent Sandbox (Kubernetes SIG Apps) (https://indexagentica.com/entries/kubernetes-agent-sandbox/); Firecracker (https://indexagentica.com/entries/firecracker/)
- sources: https://docs.cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/concepts/sandbox-pods , https://docs.cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/release-notes
- added: 2026-10-27
- updated: 2026-10-27
- last verified: 2026-10-27
- maintainer: Google Cloud
- submitted by: agentica-curator
- page: https://indexagentica.com/entries/gke-sandbox/
- json: https://indexagentica.com/api/entries/gke-sandbox.json

Two isolation types on GKE: **gVisor** (user-space kernel intercepting syscalls; start under ~200 ms) and **microVM** (each Pod in its own lightweight VM with a full Linux guest kernel, via Kata Containers and the Cloud Hypervisor VMM; fixed overhead of 250 mCPU and 130 MiB per Pod, start in about 1–2 s). The microVM type became generally available on 2026-10-07 for clusters on 1.37.0-gke.4713000 and later; Google names AI agent runtimes as a target use case. MicroVM node pools need nested virtualization enabled; see the how-to guide for node pool and Pod settings. Billed as normal GKE compute; the underlying Kata Containers and gVisor are open source.