Creating a Virtual Machine

Overview

Compute Engine allows you to create virtual machines (VMs) that run different operating systems, including multiple flavors of Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Suse, Red Hat, CoreOS) and Windows Server, on Google infrastructure. You can run thousands of virtual CPUs on a system that is designed to be fast and to offer strong consistency of performance.

In this hands-on lab, you create VM instances of various machine types using the Google Cloud console and the gcloud command line in Cloud Shell. You also learn how to connect an NGINX web server to your VM.

Although you can easily copy and paste commands from the lab to the appropriate place, it is recommended that you type the commands yourself to reinforce your understanding of the core concepts.

What you'll do

Create a VM with the Cloud console.
Create a VM with the gcloud command line.
Deploy a web server and connect it to a VM.

Prerequisites

Familiarity with standard Linux text editors such as vim, emacs, or nano.

Task 1. Create a new instance from the Cloud console

In this section, you create new predefined machine types with Compute Engine from the Cloud console.

In the Cloud console, on the Navigation menu (), click Compute Engine > VM Instances.

This may take a minute to initialize for the first time.
To create a new instance, click CREATE INSTANCE.
There are many parameters you can configure when creating a new instance. Use the following for this lab:

Field	Value	Additional Information
Name	gcelab	Name for the VM instance
Region	`europe-west4`	For more information about regions, see the Compute Engine guide, Regions and Zones.
Zone	`europe-west4-a`	Note: Remember the zone that you selected to use later. For more information about zones, see the Compute Engine guide, Regions and Zones.
Series	E2	Name of the series
Machine Type	2 vCPU	This is an (e2-medium), 2-CPU, 4GB RAM instance. Several machine types are available, ranging from micro instance types to 32-core/208GB RAM instance types. For more information, see the Compute Engine guide, About machine families. Note: A new project has a default resource quota, which may limit the number of CPU cores. You can request more when you work on projects outside this lab.
Boot Disk	New 10 GB balanced persistent diskOS Image: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)	Several images are available, including Debian, Ubuntu, CoreOS, and premium images such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows Server. For more information, see Operating System documentation.
Firewall	Allow HTTP traffic	Select this option in order to access a web server that you install later. Note: This automatically creates a firewall rule to allow HTTP traffic on port 80.

Click Create.

It should take about a minute for the VM, gcelab, to be created. After gcelab is created, the VM Instances page lists it in the VM instances list.
To use SSH to connect to the VM, click SSH to the right of the instance name, gcelab.

This launches an SSH client directly from your browser.

Note: Learn more about how to use SSH to connect to an instance from the Compute Engine guide, Connect to Linux VMs using Google tools.

Task 2. Install an NGINX web server

Now you install an NGINX web server, one of the most popular web servers in the world, to connect your VM to something.

Update the OS:

 sudo apt-get update

Copied!content_copy

Expected output:

  Get:1 http://security.debian.org stretch/updates InRelease [94.3 kB]
  Ign http://deb.debian.org strech InRelease
  Get:2 http://deb.debian.org strech-updates InRelease [91.0 kB]
  ...

Install NGINX:

 sudo apt-get install -y nginx

Copied!content_copy

Expected output:

  Reading package lists... Done
  Building dependency tree
  Reading state information... Done
  The following additional packages will be installed:
  ...

Confirm that NGINX is running:

 ps auwx | grep nginx

Copied!content_copy

Expected output:

  root      2330  0.0  0.0 159532  1628 ?        Ss   14:06   0:00 nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx -g daemon on; master_process on;
  www-data  2331  0.0  0.0 159864  3204 ?        S    14:06   0:00 nginx: worker process
  www-data  2332  0.0  0.0 159864  3204 ?        S    14:06   0:00 nginx: worker process
  root      2342  0.0  0.0  12780   988 pts/0    S+   14:07   0:00 grep nginx

To see the web page, return to the Cloud console and click the External IP link in the row for your machine, or add the External IP value to http://EXTERNAL_IP/ in a new browser window or tab.

This default web page should open:

To check your progress in this lab, click Check my progress below. A checkmark means you're successful.

Create a Compute Engine instance and add an NGINX Server to your instance with necessary firewall rules.

Check my progress

Task 3. Create a new instance with gcloud

Instead of using the Cloud console to create a VM instance, use the command line tool gcloud, which is pre-installed in Google Cloud Shell. Cloud Shell is an interactive shell environment for Google Cloud loaded with all the development tools you need (gcloud, git, and others) and offers a persistent 5-GB home directory.

Note: If you want to try this on your own machine, read the gcloud command line tool guide.

In the Cloud Shell, use gcloud to create a new VM instance from the command line:
```
 gcloud compute instances create gcelab2 --machine-type e2-medium --zone=$ZONE
```
Expected output:
```
      Created [...gcelab2].
      NAME: gcelab2
      ZONE:  europe-west4-a
      MACHINE_TYPE: e2-medium
      PREEMPTIBLE:
      INTERNAL_IP: 10.128.0.3
      EXTERNAL_IP: 34.136.51.150
      STATUS: RUNNING
```
To check your progress in this lab, click Check my progress below. A checkmark means you're successful.

Create a new instance with gcloud.

Check my progress

The new instance has these default values:
- The latest Debian 11 (bullseye) image.
- The e2-mediummachine type.
- A root persistent disk with the same name as the instance; the disk is automatically attached to the instance.

When working in your own project, you can specify a custom machine type.

To see all the defaults, run:
```
 gcloud compute instances create --help
```
Note: You can set the default region and zones that gcloud uses if you are always working within one region/zone and you don't want to append the --zone flag every time.

To do this, run these commands:

gcloud config set compute/zone ...

gcloud config set compute/region ...
To exit help, press CTRL + C.
In the Cloud console, on the Navigation menu, click Compute Engine > VM instances.
Your two new instances should be listed.
You can also use SSH to connect to your instance via gcloud. Make sure to add your zone, or omit the --zone flag if you've set the option globally:
```
 gcloud compute ssh gcelab2 --zone=$ZONE
```
Type Y to continue.
```
    Do you want to continue? (Y/n)
```

Press ENTER through the passphrase section to leave the passphrase empty.

    Generating public/private rsa key pair.
    Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase)

After connecting, disconnect from SSH by exiting from the remote shell:
```
  exit
```

Task 4. Test your knowledge

Test your knowledge about Google Cloud by taking the quiz. (Please select multiple correct options if necessary.)

Question: Through which of the following ways can you create a VM instance in Compute Engine?

The gcloud command line tool
The Cloud console

Answers of Lab

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxVQJEm2MMo&ab_channel=QuickLab%E2%98%81%EF%B8%8F

NOTE :- Make sure to export the "REGION & ZONE" as shown in video

COPY ALL THE COMMAND AND PASTE

curl -LO raw.githubusercontent.com/quiccklabs/Labs_solutions/d51b46a30325298b314a3c2f90624909dfcd5014/Creating%20a%20Virtual%20Machine/quicklabgsp001.sh

sudo chmod +x quicklabgsp001.sh
./quicklabgsp001.sh

Creating a Virtual Machine - GSP001

Table of contents

Overview

What you'll do

Prerequisites

Task 1. Create a new instance from the Cloud console

Task 2. Install an NGINX web server

Task 3. Create a new instance with gcloud

Task 4. Test your knowledge

Answers of Lab