Google Cloud

Owned by Jason Belsky
Last updated: Mar 02, 2016
2 min read

Adding a Linux system image to a project (note: this can only be done from the command line and/or Google Cloud shell)

gcloud compute images create IMAGE_NAME --source-uri https://storage.googleapis.com/macalpine-vm-images/cmb551-2015-v3-image.tar.gz
  • For example, issuing the above command with IMAGE_NAME equal to cmb551-2015-module-v3-ubuntu-image will enable the creation of any Virtual Machine with the configuration specified by the cmb551-2015-v3-image.tar.gz system image

Creating a new VM (Virtual Machine) Instance

  1. Enter the Compute Engine section of the Google Cloud Platform
    1. Click on the "Hamburger Icon" (three horizontal lines) on the top-left of the page, to the left of "Google Cloud Platform" in the blue header bar
    2. Click on Compute Engine (second item under the Compute section, right below App Engine)
  2. By default, VM instances should be highlighted in the left sidebar (the first option in the Compute Engine section)
  3. Click on the blue link Create Instance (with the + bookmark symbol to the left of it) at the top of the page.  This will bring you to the Create an instance page.
  4. Enter the following parameters:
    1. Name (the name of your instance)
      • instance-1
    2. Zone (the zone where your project will reside; not entirely important which one you choose, but it makes things easier if you consistently keep everything in the same zone)
      • us-east1-b
    3. Machine type (how many CPUs andhow much RAM do you want your virtual machine to have.  For starting out and/or troubleshooting, it's best to choose the smallest Machine type, which is micro (1 shared vCPU + 0.6 GB memory) as running this for an entire month only costs ~$4.49)
      • micro (1 shared vCPU) 0.6 GB memory
    4. Boot disk (this is where you choose the Linux operating system that your VM instance will run.  You can either use a preconfigured system image like "Ubuntu 14.04 LTS" or a customimage on the "Your image" tab.  You can also specify the Boot disk type and the Size (GB) of the boot disk.  The defaults for this (Boot disk type: Standard persistent disk & Size (GB): 10 or 30 GB are perfectly fine for our application)
      • cmb551-2015-module-v3-ubuntu-image
      • 30 GB Standard persistent disk
    5. Firewall (essentially whether you want to allow access to your Virtual Machine via the Internet; almost always we do, so check both boxes)
      • Allow HTTP traffic: Yes
      • Allow HTTPS traffic: Yes
  5. Click on the blue box Create to initialize the your VM.  This process will take about a minute.  If successful, you should see the following: 

     

 

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