I am new to GCE. I was able to create new instance using gcutil tool and GCE console. There are few questions unclear to me and need help:
1) Does GCE provides persistent disk when a new instance is created? I think its 10GB by default, not sure though. What is the right way to stop the instance without loosing data saved on it and what will be the charge (US zone) if say I need 20GB of disk space for that?
2) If I need SSL to enable HTTPS, is there any extra step I should do? I think I will need to add firewall as per the gcutil addfirewall command and create certificate (or install it from third part) ?
1) Persistent disk is definitely the way to go if you want a root drive on which data retention is independent of the life cycle of any virtual machine. When you create a Compute Engine instance via the Google Cloud Console, the “Boot Source” pull-down menu presents the following options for your boot device:
New persistent disk from image
New persistent disk from snapshot
Existing persistent disk
Scratch disk from image (not recommended)
The default option is the first one ("New persistent disk from image"), which creates a new 10 GB PD, named after your instance name with a 'boot-' prefix. You could also separately create a persistent disk and then select the "Existing persistent disk" option (along with the name of your existing disk) to use an existing PD as a boot device. In that case, your PD needs to have been pre-loaded with an image.
Re: your question about cost of a 20 GB PD, here are the PD pricing details.
Read more about Compute Engine persistent disks.
2) You can serve SSL/HTTPS traffic from a GCE instance. As you noted, you'll need to configure a firewall to allow your incoming SSL traffic (typically port 443) and you'll need to configure https service on your web server and install your desired certificate(s).
Read more about Compute Engine networking and firewalls.
As alternative approach i would suggest deploying VMs using Bitnami. There are many stacks you can choose from. This will save you time when deploying the VM. I would suggest you go with the SSD disks, as the pricing is close between magnetic disks and SSDs, but the performance boost is huge.
As for serving the content over SSL, you need to figure out how will the requests be processed. You can use NGINX or Apache servers. In this case you would need to configure the virtual hosts for default ports - 80 for non-encrypted and 443 for SSL traffic.
The easiest way to serve SSL traffic from your VM is generate SSL certificates using the Letsencrypt service.
Related
I'm trying to set up a Staging VM for a site that's in production that I have just inherited. The site is running Wordpress/Woocommerce and has not been updated in a while. The VM it's hosted on is running an old version of PHP. Obviously, this all needs to be fixed up but I'm unfamiliar with GCP Compute Engine. Also any attempt to run backup/clone plugins crashes the site and requires a restore from the daily snapshot which is very annoying.
Is it possible to clone the VM/disk to a new instance, point that at a temporary domain, and test/update the site? I have been trying to do this for a while now without much luck any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Creating a clone of an existing VM is possible and quite easy.
Create a snapshot of the VM. If possible stop the VM before doing this to ensure 100% accuracy - this way you will have exact snapshot of the drive without any errors. You can do it while the VM is running too if stopping it is out of the question.
Create a VM from the shapshot - select as a boot disk a snapshot that you've just created. Remember to assign a static public IP to this VM (unless you want it changed after VM restart and since you're going to do some configuration this would likely happen). You can change the VM's specs at this time too - nothing stops you from adding/removing CPU's, RAM etc. It may well be that your VM is underutilised and you can use something smaller to save costs. Or the opposite.
Start the machine. Now you can modify your WP configuration to point to a new domain. Depending on the SSL certificate - you can either use external one or the one provided by GCP (most convinient solution).
If you already own a domain you want to use for staging you can host it in Cloud DNS or at some other provider - just point it to the external IP you just reserved.
If you will be hosting your domain in the Cloud DNS then you will find necessary infomration in the documentation about managed zones (domains).
You can also consider creating a new VM and setting it as a template for creating a group of VM's (managed autoscaled group) and creating an external HTTPS load balancer in front of it. But this adds a little to the complexity so it's just my idea if you needed to handle a lot more traffic.
I have a compute engine instance on google cloud which is running fine. user base is increasing and I wish to upgrade to a bigger compute engine in terms of cpu and memory.
What is the most easy way to do such migration?
What is the snapshot, image, persistent disk features in google compute engine? Are they anyway useful to my task?
I figured it out. Lennert answer is good. I will add few more things to complete it. You can always stop a VM, edit the CPU/memory and restart the VM. But this action may change the external IP address and cause lot of issues. You can handle it but it may cause further downtime. You may have to update the new IP address at DNS and inside the code. One way to avoid this hassle is that you should Reserve a static IP adreess [in console, go to NETWORKING > EXTERNAL IP ADDRESS > RESERVE A STATIC IP ADDRESS]. If you do this, your ip address will not change once you restart the VM.
Image is aka Operating System. While creating a VM, you are asked to choose a boot disk, disk which is used to boot your VM from. You can select from pre-defined images.
Snapshot is the copy of the disk. If it is a boot disk, it contains the operating system image too. We can create a snapshot of an existing disk and use it as the boot disk while creating new VM.
Persistent Disk is the disk that can persists even if you delete the VM [provided you have deselect the option of deleting it while deleting the VM]. We can delete VM and use a persistent disk to create new ones. We can simply pay for persistent disk only, without having any VM.
The easiest way is to stop the machine, change the machine type from the console and start the machine again. No need to create backups (snapshots), new VM's, etc.
I'm thinking about upgrading my company's integration server with a the repos on a separate disk that would be shared with a backup server. Like so:
[Main Integration Server] ---R/W--- [Repo Vdisk] ---R/O--- [Backup Integration Server]
My problem is that according to the GCE docs, if I attach the same Vdisk to more than one instance, all instances must only access the disk in read-only mode. What I'm looking to do would be to have one instance access it in read-write, and one in read-only mode.
Is this at all possible without powering up a third instance to act as a sort of "storage server"?
As you quoted from the docs and as mentioned in my earlier answer, if you attach a single persistent disk to multiple instances, they must all mount it in read-only mode.
Since you're looking for a fully-managed storage alternative so you don't have to run and manage another VM yourself, consider using Google Cloud Storage and mount your bucket with gcsfuse which will make it look like a regular mounted filesystem.
I am running n1-standard-1 (1 vCPU, 3.75 GB memory) Compute Instance , In my android app around 80 users are online write now and cpu Utilisation of instance is 99% and my app became less responsive. Kindly suggest me the workaround and If i need to upgrade , can I do that with same instance or new instance needs to be created.
Since your app is running already and users are connecting to it, you don't want to do the following process:
shut down the VM instance, keeping the boot disk and other disks
boot a more powerful instance, using the boot disk from step (1)
attach and mount any additional disks, if applicable
Instead, you might want to do the following:
create an additional VM instance with similar software/configuration
create a load balancer and add both the original and new VM to it as a backend
change your DNS name to point to the load balancer IP instead of the original VM instance
Now, your users will be randomly sent to a VM that's least-loaded to see the application, and you can add more VMs if your traffic increases.
You did not describe your application in detail, so it's unclear if each VM has local state (e.g., runs a database) or there's a database running externally. You will still need to figure out how to manage the stateful systems such as database or user-uploaded data from all the VM instances, which is hard to advise on given the little information in your quest.
From what I gather, the only way to use a MySQL database with Azure websites is to use Cleardb but can I install MySQL on VMs provided in Azure Cloud Services. And if so how?
This question might get closed and moved to ServerFault (where it really belongs). That said: ClearDB provides MySQL-as-a-Service in Azure. It has nothing to do with what you can install in your own Virtual Machines. You can absolutely do a VM-based MySQL install (or any other database engine that you can install on Linux or Windows). In fact, the Azure portal even has a tutorial for a MySQL installation on OpenSUSE.
If you're referring to installing in web/worker roles: This simply isn't a good fit for database engines, due to:
the need to completely script/automate the install with zero interaction (which might take a long time). This includes all necessary software being downloaded/installed to the vm images every time a new instance is spun up.
the likely inability for a database cluster to cope with arbitrary scale-out (the typical use case for web/worker roles). Database clusters may or may not work well when a scale-out occurs (adding an additional vm). Same thing when scaling in (removing a vm).
less-optimal attached-storage configuration
inability to use Linux VMs
So, assuming you're still ok with Virtual Machines (vs stateless Cloud Service vm's): You'll need to carefully plan your deployment, with decisions such as:
Distro (Ubuntu, CentOS, etc). Azure-supported Linux distro list here
Selecting proper VM size (the DS series provide SSD attached disk support; the G series scale to 448GB RAM)
Azure Storage attached disks being non-Premium or Premium (premium disks are SSD-backed, durable disks scaling to 1TB/5000 IOPS per disk, up to 32 disks per VM depending on VM size)
Virtual network configuration (for multi-node cluster)
Accessibility of database cluster (whether your app is in the vnet or accesses it through a public endpoint; and if the latter, setting up ACL's)
Backup / HA / DR planning
Someone else mentioned using a pre-built VM image from VM Depot. Just realize that, if you go that route, you're relying on someone else to configure the database engine install for you. This may or may not be optimal for what you're trying to achieve. And the images may or may not be up-to-date with the latest versions, patches, etc.
Of course, what I wrote applies to any database engine you install in your own virtual machines, where a service provider (such as ClearDB) tends to take care of most of these things for you.
If you are talking about standard VMs then you can use a pre-built images on VMDepot for that.
If you are talking about web or worker roles (PaaS) I wouldn't recommend it, but if you really want to you could. You would need to fully script the install of the solution on the host. The only downside (and it's a big one) you would have would be the that the host will be moved to a new host at some point which would mean your MySQL data files would be lost - if you backed up frequently and were happy to lose some data then this option may work for you.
I think, that the main question is "what You want to achieve?". As I see, You want to use PaaS solution with Web Apps or Cloud Service and You need a MySQL database. If Yes, You have two options (both technically as David Makogon said). First one is to deploy Your own (one) server with MySQL and connect to it from the outside (internet side). Second solution is to create one MySQL server or cluster and connect Your application internally in Azure virtual network. WIth Cloud Service it is simple but with Web App it is not. You must create VPN gateway in Azure VM and connect Your Web App to this gateway. In this way You will have internal connection wfrom Your application to Your own MySQL cluster.