Create Windows Instance in Google Cloud Platform
This post is taking me away from my usual posts, Instead I will go through a quick guide on how to create a Windows Instance on Google Cloud Platform.
What is Google Cloud Platform?
Google Cloud Platform, is a set of cloud offering from Google which runs on the same infrastructure which it uses for end-user products like Google Search and YouTube. Google Cloud Platform also offers services like compute, data storage, data analytics and machine learning but to name a few.
How to Access Google Cloud Platform?
To access Google Cloud Platform, you can use the below link to access the Cloud Platform.
On the Google Cloud Platform page, you can click on the Try IT FREE button. This will allow you to start a free 12 months trail to explore the Google Cloud and also run some services.
Once you have clicked on the TRY IT Free you can accept the terms and conditions and click Agree and Continue. Google has been very generous with providing a $300 trail credit.
So, let the playing and exploring begin.
Once the registration process aka admin process is complete, you will be redirected to the Google Cloud Platform management page.
From the on-screen notification, you can click on Tour the Console to get a look and feel of the Google Cloud Platform.
On the dashboard under Getting started, you can click on deploy prebuild solutions.
The prebuilt solutions section takes you to a candy store of ready to deploy systems from SAP HANA to WordPress to Windows Server compute workloads all ready at your fingertips.
To get back to the focus of this post and not to get lost in the candy store, let’s go ahead and deploy a Windows compute workload on the Google Cloud Platform.
On the prebuild solutions dashboard click on Operating Systems on the left-hand side.
Here we can choose from Windows, Ubuntu and RedHat servers etc. which can be deployed.
For the purpose of the post, I will go ahead and click on Windows Server 2016, Next you will be redirected to the Launch Compute Engine screen. On this page, you will get a very nice detailed breakdown of what the cost will be for running the Windows Compute Work-load for the month.
After accepting the money matter things, you will be redirected to the provisioning console where you can manage the workload as well.
Wait for the initialization process to complete and then click on vm instances.
From the VM instances console, you will be presented with a screen to create a new instance, click on create to start the process.
On the create vm instance page, provide a name for the server and select the amount of CPU etc. here you can also modify some additional options in the event of a hardware failure so the vm will migrate to an alternative host of restart etc.
Once you have provided all the needed information, click on create to start the deployment process.
Once the deployment is complete, you will be able to see all the vm information on the screen provided.
Here we can see the Internal and External Ip of the vm and also from here you can RDP to the vm.
To get access to the vm, you first need to specify a Windows Password for the vm and this can be done by clicking on the drop-down arrow next to RDP.
By clicking on set Windows password, you will be presented with a screen to create a new user account. Specify the new username and click SET.
Once you have clicked SET and auto generated password will be presented to you.
To start the RDP session, click on the drop-down next to RDP and click on Download RDP file.
By clicking on the downloaded RDP file, provide the username and password and there you go your new Windows VM instance is ready for use.
To view the performance of the vm, click on vm instances and then click on the mentioned vm.
Here you can see the CPU utilization and by clicking on CPU utilization you can select view Disk utilization etc. as well.
In my opinion, this is a very nice console to work from, simple and yet fully packed with incredible features etc. Just hope that Google can add a little bit more to their marketing budget to compete with AWS and Azure to get more people to learn about their cloud offerings.
In the next post, I will look at deploying a Google Cloud Platform workload using the Google Shell aka gcloud SDK shell.
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