Getting Started with Containers in Google Cloud Platform: Deploy, Manage, and Secure Containerized Applications

© Shimon Ifrah 2021

S. IfrahGetting Started with Containers in Google Cloud Platform https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6470-6_1

1. Get Started with Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Shimon Ifrah¹  

(1)

Melbourne, VIC, Australia

In this chapter, we will get started with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) by covering the following topics:

Get introduction to GCP

Learn the benefits of a GCP free tier account

Understand projects in GCP

Use Cloud Shell to deploy workloads

Secure the GCP account

Learn about GCP container services

Introduction

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) was launched in November 2011 as a public cloud computing platform offering computing, storage, networking, database, Big Data, security, and identity services. The seed that grew into GCP was the 2008 release of the Google App Engine, which offered runtime and platform as a service (PaaS) web services to developers inside Google data centers. GCP is also part of the Google Cloud, which includes the business productivity suite, also known as G Suite. As of writing this book, GCP has a presence in twenty countries across sixty-one datacenters.

Currently, GCP offers around ninety products and cloud services in the following categories:

Compute Services: App Engine, Compute Engine (virtual machines), Kubernetes, Cloud Functions, Cloud Run

Storage and Databases: Cloud storage, SQL, BigTable, Spanner

Networking: VPC, load balancing, Armor, CDN, Interconnect, cloud DNS

Big Data: Big Query, cloud dataflow, Dataproc, Composer, Datalab, Dataprep, Pub/Sub, Data StudioAutoML

Cloud AI: AutoML, TPU, Machine Learning Engine, Job Discovery, Dialogflow Enterprise, natural language, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, Translation API, Vision API, Cloud Video Intelligence

Management Tools:Stackdriver, Deployment Manager, Cloud Console, Cloud Shell, Console Mobile App, APIs

Identify and Security: IAM, Identity-Aware Proxy, Data Loss Prevention API, Key Enforcement, Key Management Service, Resource Manager, Security Command Center, Security Scanner, Access Transparency, VPC Service Controls

IoT: IoT Core, Edge TPU, IoT Edge

API Platform: Maps Platform, Apigee API Platform, API Monetization, Developer Portal, API Analytics, Apigee Sense, Endpoints

GCP also offers professional certifications for engineers, developers, and architects.

Get Started with Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

We will get started by building the fundamentals needed to deploy services and applications to GCP, which is an integrated cloud platform. Our focus will be on GCP’s container services, but at the same time we will set up all the support services that are needed to run production workloads securely and reliably.

The Benefits of a GCP Free Tier Account

The GCP free tier account comes with a number of free services that you will never be asked to pay for, regardless of whether the twelve-month period has passed. Having access to always-free services can help with the testing of applications, scripts, and many more tasks you might need to test during the lifecycle of your application.

GCP Free Tier

To help engineers, developers, and architects get started with GCP, Google offers a free tier subscription for new users that provides the following:

$300 credit for twelve months

Always-free GCP services that include:

Free monthly use of an f1-micro virtual machine instance

5GB per month of cloud storage

Access to free Cloud Functions (serverless)

No cluster management fee for Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster (you will pay for nodes only)

Access to run free web applications on App Engine

60 minutes of free speech-to-text service

120 minutes of Cloud Build service

Sign Up for GCP Free Tier account

To sign up for a free tier account and use the $300 free credit, perform the following steps:

Go to the following URL: https://cloud.google.com/free

Click on the Get Started for Free button to start the registration process, as shown in Figure 1-1.

Figure 1-1

Get started with GCP

Follow the registration and verification process, and you will see the free credit notice, as shown in Figure 1-2. You will also need to provide a credit card during the process; however, it will not be charged until you activate billing on your account.

Figure 1-2

$300 credit for free

On completion, you will see the Google Cloud console, as shown in Figure 1-3. The left navigation menu offers access to all the services available on the GCP platform. The Dashboard offers access to the actual selected service. You can access the GC console directly using the following link: https://console.cloud.google.com/

Figure 1-3

Google Cloud console

To check the status of your GCP billing and how much free credit is left, do the following:

From the GC Console’s Navigation menu, click on Billing.

The Billing dashboard will display the current free credit left on the account, as shown in Figure 1-4. For instance, I have $447 AUD, which is equivalent to $300 USD.

Figure 1-4

Promotional credits

Understanding GCP Projects

Before we go deeper into the GCP platform, I would like to explain an essential and fundamental concept that you should know. Everything in GCP is based on a project; a project is a logical unit that organizes resources like storage, compute, API, permissions, and billing. Each project is a separate entity, which means that resources in one project cannot access resources from other projects. Once a project is deleted, all resources inside the project except users are removed, which makes it cost-effective and efficient.

A common reason for using projects in GCP is to separate production and development workloads into different projects. By doing so, we prevent the breakdown of our production environment as a result of mixing it with non-production workloads.

Creating a Project

To understand the concept a bit better, let’s go ahead and create a project that will host a Linux instance. GCP will create a default project and make things a bit easier for you to get started. The default project is called My First Project, as shown in Figure 1-5.

Figure 1-5

My First Project

In our case, I will create a new project and place my virtual machine instance in it. To do so, I will use the GCP Resource Manager console; to access the console, click on IAM & Admin from the Navigation menu and select Manage resources, as shown in Figure 1-6.

Figure 1-6

Manage resources

Note

You can also access the Resource Manager console from the top search box by searching for manage resources.

To create a new project, click on the Create Project button on the top menu, as shown in Figure 1-7.

Figure 1-7

Create a new project

Note

You can also delete an existing project from the same console.

On the New Project page, fill in the project name details and click Create, as shown in Figure 1-8.

Figure 1-8

Create a new project

Note

By default, each GCP tenant can create twenty-five projects; if you need to create more than twenty-five projects, you will need to contact support and request a quota increase. The process to request a quota increase is straightforward and involves filling in a form and waiting for GCP to increase the quota. This process helps GCP manage their resource allocation strategy and ensure the platform is not over-utilized.

It will take GCP thirty seconds to create the project, at which point it becomes available to us. After the project is ready, we can access it from the projects drop-down list located at the top-left corner, as shown in Figure 1-9. To open my new project, I will click on the arrow and select my project from the Select a Project page.

Figure 1-9

Select a Project page

Create a VM Instance

To create a new virtual machine instance, use the Navigation menu , click on Compute Engine, and select VM Instances from the list. The first time you access VM Instances, you will see a message telling you that Compute Engine is getting ready . . . , which means GCP is preparing the backend infrastructure needed to provision VMs. While the GCP prepares the infrastructure, the Create button is grey, and you cannot create instances. When the process is completed, go ahead and click Create. The getting ready message is shown in Figure 1-10.

Figure 1-10

VM Instances

After clicking on Create, you will see the Create an Instance page with all the options. The GCP VM creation process is very straightforward and is available in a single-page wizard, which makes the process simpler and faster.

To create an instance, fill in the Name, Region, Zone, Image, and Instance Size fields. The Create an Instance page is shown in Figure 1-11.

Figure 1-11

Create an instance

GCP made the costing of the VM very clear; the monthly cost of the instance will show up on the left. In my case, the VM will cost me $4.28 a month, which comes out to $0.006 per hour. GCP also displays the estimated cost breakdown, which includes compute and disk. Figure 1-12 shows the cost estimate for my VM instance.

Figure 1-12

VM instance cost estimates

Use REST API Request to Create VM Instance

If you scroll down to the bottom of the Create VM Instance page, you will see an option to create the same instance and configuration using the REST API. The REST API allows you to create, manage, and delete resources in GCP using programming languages like Python, .NET, and Node.js.

If you click on the REST link under the Create button, as shown in Figure 1-13, you will see the code you need to use to create the instance.

Figure 1-13

REST API command

In Figure 1-14, you can see the REST API requests required to create the instance. For more information about accessing and using the GCP REST API, please visit the following URL:

Figure 1-14

REST API request

https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/apis?hl=en_GB

Use gcloud Command Line to Create VM Instance

You can also use the gcloud command-line utility to create the same instance. If you click on the Command Line link shown in Figure 1-13, you will see the gcloud command you need to run to create the VM instance, shown in Figure 1-15.

Figure 1-15

gcloud Command Line

In a later section, we will explore Cloud Shell and gcloud commands.

Once the VM has been created, you can see the VM Instances page, as shown in Figure 1-16.

Figure 1-16

VM instances

Delete a Project

Now that we have created our first VM, let’s go ahead and delete a project and see the end-to-end process. To delete a project, from the Navigation menu, do the following:

Click on IAM & Admin

From the extended list, click on Manage Resources. From the Manage Resources page, select Web-project.

Click on the Delete button, as shown in Figure 1-17.

Figure 1-17

Delete project

After you click Delete, you will be presented with the shut down project message that is shown in Figure 1-18. To confirm the deletion of the project, you need to actually type the name of the project, and not just copy and paste the name.

Figure 1-18

Shut down project

Once you type the project name and click Shut Down, GCP will keep all the resources inside the project for thirty days, after which point all resources will be deleted.

After removing the project, you will see the pending deletion message that is shown in Figure 1-19.

Figure 1-19

"Pending