A look at Google Cloud today, interesting stuff! The Google interface is actually really user friendly!

Once logged into https://console.cloud.google.com/ it was a case of activating my free sub, around £200 for 90 days of compute, as I’ll be wiping the machines once built then I shouldnt eat into the cost too much. below, I am cloning a github tutotial which will go through the process, easy to follow!

What are ARM Templates?

ARM templates are also known as Azure Resource Manager templates, these allow us to deploy Infrastructure as a Code, meaning systems and complete environments can be spun up and down at a seconds notice depending on requirements, the benefits this brings not only in flexibility but cost savings cannot be ignored. The templates often have predefined settings which based upon the template makeup, can request feedback from the user deploying the template, this almost certainly would be the resource group name, machine name (if its a machine), perhaps a subnet range etc.

What did I need to setup?

Install PowerShell CLI, use az login to connect into my tenant (using global admin - in a production environment you would use a automation account or something that has only permissions to perform this function). Create a resource group, then run the az group deployment command to create the resources that are part of the template, the whole process took 5 minutes.

Setting my project folder and enabling the compute api, what I noticed earlier was this isnt automatically imported meaning it wont pickup regions for where your compute will live.

Setting deployment folder and creating the deployment of 2vms.

Confirmation of the creation of our compute.

I double check the activity log I can also see this via the dashboard.

I can also see the compute itself within VM instances, and click on them to get the shell command to connect in.

POSH

gcloud beta compute ssh --zone "us-central1-f" "the-first-vm" --project "fisontechproject" 

Now connected to my first google vm!

I’d probably now stick something on the machine/s if I was todo anymore, or alternatively a template would be made specifically for something like SQL and I would run that instead.

I have quite enjoyed looking at google cloud, so am going to break this down into multiple days.