Chapter 5. Deploying a Red Hat Enterprise Linux image as a Google Compute Engine instance on Google Cloud Platform

Procedure

1. Ensure that you have enabled your host machine for virtualization. See Enabling virtualization in RHEL 8 for information and procedures.

2. Create and start a basic Red Hat Enterprise Linux VM. For instructions, see Creating virtual machines.

   1. If you use the command line to create your VM, ensure that you set the default memory and CPUs to the capacity you want for the VM. Set your virtual network interface to virtio.

      For example, the following command creates a kvmtest VM using the /home/username/Downloads/rhel8.iso image:

      # virt-install \
          --name kvmtest --memory 2048 --vcpus 2 \
          --cdrom /home/username/Downloads/rhel8.iso,bus=virtio \
          --os-variant=rhel8.0

   2. If you use the web console to create your VM, follow the procedure in Creating virtual machines using the web console, with these caveats:

      • Do not check Immediately Start VM.
      • Change your Memory size to your preferred settings.
      • Before you start the installation, ensure that you have changed Model under Virtual Network Interface Settings to virtio and change your vCPUs to the capacity settings you want for the VM.

Procedure

1. Choose the language you want to use during the installation process.

2. On the Installation Summary view:

   1. Click Software Selection and check Minimal Install.
   2. Click Done.

   3. Click Installation Destination and check Custom under Storage Configuration.

      • Verify at least 500 MB for /boot. You can use the remaining space for root /.
      • Standard partitions are recommended, but you can use Logical Volume Management (LVM).
      • You can use xfs, ext4, or ext3 for the file system.
      • Click Done when you are finished with changes.
3. Click Begin Installation.
4. Set a Root Password. Create other users as applicable.
5. Reboot the VM and log in as root once the installation completes.

6. Configure the image.

   1. Register the VM and enable the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 repository.

      # subscription-manager register --auto-attach

   2. Ensure that the cloud-init package is installed and enabled.

      # yum install cloud-init
      # systemctl enable --now cloud-init.service

7. Power down the VM.

Procedure

1. Launch the GCP Console.
2. Click the drop-down menu to the right of Google Cloud Platform.
3. From the pop-up menu, click NEW PROJECT.
4. From the New Project window, enter a name for your new project.
5. Check Organization. Click the drop-down menu to change the organization, if necessary.
6. Confirm the Location of your parent organization or folder. Click Browse to search for and change this value, if necessary.

7. Click CREATE to create your new GCP project.

   Note

   Once you have installed the Google Cloud SDK, you can use the gcloud projects create CLI command to create a project. For example:

   # gcloud projects create my-gcp-project3 --name project3

   The example creates a project with the project ID my-gcp-project3 and the project name project3. See gcloud project create for more information.

Procedure

1. Follow the GCP instructions for downloading and extracting the Google Cloud SDK archive. See the GCP document Quickstart for Linux for details.

2. Follow the same instructions for initializing the Google Cloud SDK.

   Note

   Once you have initialized the Google Cloud SDK, you can use the gcloud CLI commands to perform tasks and obtain information about your project and instances. For example, you can display project information with the gcloud compute project-info describe --project <project-name> command.

Procedure

1. Use the ssh-keygen command to generate an SSH key pair for use with GCE.

   # ssh-keygen -t rsa -f ~/.ssh/google_compute_engine

2. From the GCP Console Dashboard page, click the Navigation menu to the left of the Google Cloud Console banner and select Compute Engine and then select Metadata.
3. Click SSH Keys and then click Edit.

4. Enter the output generated from the ~/.ssh/google_compute_engine.pub file and click Save.

   You can now connect to your instance using standard SSH.

   # ssh -i ~/.ssh/google_compute_engine <username>@<instance_external_ip>

Procedure

1. If you are not already logged in to GCP, log in with the following command.

   # gcloud auth login

2. Create a storage bucket.

   # gsutil mb gs://bucket_name

   Note

   Alternatively, you can use the Google Cloud Console to create a bucket. See Create a bucket for information.

Procedure

1. Run the qemu-img command to convert your image. The converted image must have the name disk.raw.

   # qemu-img convert -f qcow2 -O raw rhel-{ProductNumber}.0-sample.qcow2 disk.raw

2. Tar the image.

   # tar --format=oldgnu -Sczf disk.raw.tar.gz disk.raw

3. Upload the image to the bucket you created previously. Upload could take a few minutes.

   # gsutil cp disk.raw.tar.gz gs://bucket_name

4. From the Google Cloud Platform home screen, click the collapsed menu icon and select Storage and then select Browser.

5. Click the name of your bucket.

   The tarred image is listed under your bucket name.

   Note

   You can also upload your image using the GCP Console. To do so, click the name of your bucket and then click Upload files.

Procedure

1. Run the following command to create an image for GCE. Specify the name of the image you are creating, the bucket name, and the name of the tarred image.

   # gcloud compute images create my-image-name --source-uri gs://my-bucket-name/disk.raw.tar.gz

   Note

   Alternatively, you can use the Google Cloud Console to create an image. See Creating, deleting, and deprecating custom images for more information.

2. Optionally, find the image in the GCP Console.

   1. Click the Navigation menu to the left of the Google Cloud Console banner.
   2. Select Compute Engine and then Images.

Procedure

1. From the GCP Console Dashboard page, click the Navigation menu to the left of the Google Cloud Console banner and select Compute Engine and then select Images.
2. Select your image.
3. Click Create Instance.
4. On the Create an instance page, enter a Name for your instance.
5. Choose a Region and Zone.
6. Choose a Machine configuration that meets or exceeds the requirements of your workload.
7. Ensure that Boot disk specifies the name of your image.
8. Optionally, under Firewall, select Allow HTTP traffic or Allow HTTPS traffic.

9. Click Create.

   Note

   These are the minimum configuration options necessary to create a basic instance. Review additional options based on your application requirements.

10. Find your image under VM instances.

11. From the GCP Console Dashboard, click the Navigation menu to the left of the Google Cloud Console banner and select Compute Engine and then select VM instances.

    Note

    Alternatively, you can use the gcloud compute instances create CLI command to create a GCE VM instance from an image. A simple example follows.

    gcloud compute instances create myinstance3 --zone=us-central1-a --image test-iso2-image

    The example creates a VM instance named myinstance3 in zone us-central1-a based upon the existing image test-iso2-image. See gcloud compute instances create for more information.

Procedure

1. Run the following command to ensure that your instance is running. The command lists information about your GCE instance, including whether the instance is running, and, if so, the public IP address of the running instance.

   # gcloud compute instances list

2. Connect to your instance using standard SSH. The example uses the google_compute_engine key created earlier.

   # ssh -i ~/.ssh/google_compute_engine <user_name>@<instance_external_ip>

   Note

   GCP offers a number of ways to SSH into your instance. See Connecting to instances for more information. You can also connect to your instance using the root account and password you set previously.

Procedure

1. Register your system.

   # subscription-manager register --auto-attach

2. Attach your subscriptions.

   • You can use an activation key to attach subscriptions. See Creating Red Hat Customer Portal Activation Keys for more information.
   • Alternatively, you can manually attach a subscription using the ID of the subscription pool (Pool ID). See Attaching and Removing Subscriptions Through the Command Line.