Chapter 5. Deploying a Red Hat Enterprise Linux image as a Google Compute Engine instance on Google Cloud Platform You have a number of options for deploying a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7 image as a Google Compute Engine (GCE) instance on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This chapter discusses your options for choosing an image and lists or refers to system requirements for your host system and VM. The chapter provides procedures for creating a custom VM from an ISO image, uploading to GCE, and launching an instance. This chapter refers to the Google documentation in a number of places. For many procedures, see the referenced Google documentation for additional detail. Note For a list of Red Hat product certifications for GCP, see Red Hat on Google Cloud Platform . Prerequisites You need a Red Hat Customer Portal account to complete the procedures in this chapter. Create an account with GCP to access the Google Cloud Platform Console. See Google Cloud for more information. Enable your Red Hat subscriptions through the Red Hat Cloud Access program . The Red Hat Cloud Access program allows you to move your Red Hat subscriptions from physical or on-premise systems onto GCP with full support from Red Hat. Additional resources Red Hat in the Public Cloud Google Cloud 5.1. Red Hat Enterprise Linux image options on GCP The following table lists image choices and the differences in the image options. Table 5.1. Image options Image option Subscriptions Sample scenario Considerations Choose to deploy a custom image that you move to GCP. Leverage your existing Red Hat subscriptions. Enable subscriptions through the Red Hat Cloud Access program , upload your custom image, and attach your subscriptions. The subscription includes the Red Hat product cost; you pay all other instance costs. Custom images that you move to GCP are called "Cloud Access" images because you leverage your existing Red Hat subscriptions. Red Hat provides support directly for Cloud Access images. Choose to deploy an existing GCP image that includes RHEL. The GCP images include a Red Hat product. Choose a RHEL image when you launch an instance on the GCP Compute Engine , or choose an image from the Google Cloud Platform Marketplace . You pay GCP hourly on a pay-as-you-go model. Such images are called "on-demand" images. GCP offers support for on-demand images through a support agreement. Important You cannot convert an on-demand instance to a Red Hat Cloud Access instance. To change from an on-demand image to a Red Hat Cloud Access bring-your-own subscription (BYOS) image, create a new Red Hat Cloud Access instance and migrate data from your on-demand instance. Cancel your on-demand instance after you migrate your data to avoid double billing. The remainder of this chapter includes information and procedures pertaining to custom images. Additional resources Red Hat in the Public Cloud Images Red Hat Cloud Access Reference Guide Creating an instance from a custom image 5.2. Understanding base images This section includes information on using preconfigured base images and their configuration settings. 5.2.1. Using a custom base image To manually configure a VM, you start with a base (starter) VM image. Once you have created the base VM image, you can modify configuration settings and add the packages the VM requires to operate on the cloud. You can make additional configuration changes for your specific application after you upload the image. Additional resources Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2.2. Virtual machine configuration settings Cloud VMs must have the following configuration settings. Table 5.2. VM configuration settings Setting Recommendation ssh ssh must be enabled to provide remote access to your VMs. dhcp The primary virtual adapter should be configured for dhcp. 5.3. Creating a base VM from an ISO image Follow the procedures in this section to create a base image from an ISO image. Prerequisites Enable virtualization for your Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 host machine by following the Virtualization Deployment and Administration Guide . 5.3.1. Downloading the ISO image Procedure Download the latest Red Hat Enterprise Linux ISO image from the Red Hat Customer Portal . Move the image to the /var/lib/libvirt/images directory. 5.3.2. Creating a VM from an ISO image Procedure Ensure that you have enabled your host machine for virtualization. For information and procedures to install virutalization packages, see Installing virtualization packages on an existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux system Create and start a basic Red Hat Enterprise Linux VM. For instructions to create VM, refer to Creating a virtual machine . 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 . A basic command line sample follows. If you use the virt-manager application to create your VM, follow the procedure in Creating guests with virt-manager , with these caveats: Do not check Immediately Start VM . Change your Memory and Storage 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. 5.3.3. Completing the RHEL installation Perform the following steps to complete the installation and to enable root access once the VM launches. Procedure Choose the language you want to use during the installation process. On the Installation Summary view: Click Software Selection and check Minimal Install . Click Done . 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. Click Begin Installation . Set a Root Password . Reboot the VM and log in as root once the installation completes. Configure the image. Note Ensure that the cloud-init package is installed and enabled. Power down the VM. 5.4. Uploading the RHEL image to GCP Follow the procedures in this section on your host machine to upload your image to GCP. 5.4.1. Creating a new project on GCP Complete the following steps to create a new project on GCP. Prerequisites You must have created an account with GCP. If you have not, see Google Cloud for more information. Procedure Launch the GCP Console . Click the drop-down menu to the right of Google Cloud Platform . From the pop-up menu, click NEW PROJECT . From the New Project window, enter a name for your new project. Check the Organization . Click the drop-down menu to change the organization, if necessary. Confirm the Location of your parent organization or folder. Click Browse to search for and change this value, if necessary. 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. A simple example follows. The example creates a project with the project ID my-gcp-project3 and the project name project3 . See gcloud project create for more information. Additional resources Creating and Managing Resources 5.4.2. Installing the Google Cloud SDK Complete the following steps to install the Google Cloud SDK. Prerequisites Create a project on the GCP if you have not already done so. See Creating a new project on the Google Cloud Platform for more information. Ensure that your host system includes Python 2.7 or later. If it does not, install Python 2.7. Procedure Follow the GCP instructions for downloading and extracting the Google Cloud SDK archive. See the GCP document Quickstart for Linux for details. 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. Additional resources Quickstart for Linux gcloud command reference gcloud command-line tool overview 5.4.3. Creating SSH keys for Google Compute Engine Perform the following procedure to generate and register SSH keys with GCE so that you can SSH directly into an instance using its public IP address. Procedure Use the ssh-keygen command to generate an SSH key pair for use with GCE. 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 . Click SSH Keys and then click Edit . 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. Note You can run the gcloud compute config-ssh command to populate your config file with aliases for your instances. The aliases allow simple SSH connections by instance name. For information on the gcloud compute config-ssh command, see gcloud compute config-ssh . Additional resources gcloud compute config-ssh Connecting to instances 5.4.4. Creating a storage bucket in GCP Storage Importing to GCP requires a GCP Storage Bucket. Complete the following steps to create a bucket. Procedure If you are not already logged in to GCP, log in with the following command. Create a storage bucket. Note Alternatively, you can use the Google Cloud Console to create a bucket. See Create a bucket for information. Additional resources Create a bucket 5.4.5. Converting and uploading your image to your GCP Bucket Complete the following procedure to convert and upload your image to your GCP Bucket. The samples are representative; they convert a qcow2 image to raw format and then tar that image for upload. Procedure Run the qemu-img command to convert your image. The converted image must have the name disk.raw . Tar the image. Upload the image to the bucket you created previously. Upload could take a few minutes. Verification steps From the Google Cloud Platform home screen, click the collapsed menu icon and select Storage and then select Browser . 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 . Additional resources Manually importing virtual disks Choosing an import method 5.4.6. Creating an image from the object in the GCP bucket Perform the following procedure to create an image from the object in your GCP bucket. Procedure 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. Note Alternatively, you can use the Google Cloud Console to create an image. See Creating, deleting, and deprecating custom images for information. Optionally, find the image in the GCP Console. Click the Navigation menu to the left of the Google Cloud Console banner. Select Compute Engine and then Images . Additional resources Creating, deleting, and deprecating custom images gcloud compute images create 5.4.7. Creating a Google Compute Engine instance from an image Complete the following steps to configure a GCE VM instance using the GCP Console. Note The following procedure provides instructions for creating a basic VM instance using the GCP Console. See Creating and starting a VM instance for more information on GCE VM instances and their configuration options. Procedure From the GCP Console Dashboard page , click the Navigation menu to the left of the Google Cloud Console banner , select Compute Engine , and then select Images . Select your image. Click Create Instance . On the Create an instance page, enter a Name for your instance. Choose a Region and Zone . Choose a Machine configuration that meets or exceeds the requirements of your workload. Ensure that Boot disk specifies the name of your image. Optionally, under Firewall , select Allow HTTP traffic or Allow HTTPS traffic . Click Create . Note These are the minimum configuration options necessary to create a basic instance. Review additional options based on your application requirements. Find your image under VM instances . From the GCP Console Dashboard, click the Navigation menu to the left of the Google Cloud Console banner , 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. 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. 5.4.8. Connecting to your instance Perform the following procedure to connect to your GCE instance using its public IP address. Procedure 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. Connect to your instance using standard SSH. The example uses the google_compute_engine key created earlier. Note GCP offers a number of ways to SSH into your instance. See Connecting to instances for more information. Additional resources gcloud compute instances list Connecting to instances 5.4.9. Attaching Red Hat subscriptions Complete the following steps to attach the subscriptions you previously enabled through the Red Hat Cloud Access program. Prerequisites You must have enabled your subscriptions. Procedure Register your system. Attach your subscriptions. You can use an activation key to attach subscriptions. Refer to Creating Red Hat Customer Portal Activation Keys . Alternatively, you can manually attach a subscription using the ID of the subscription pool (Pool ID). Refer to Attaching and Removing Subscriptions Through the Command Line . Additional resources Creating Red Hat Customer Portal Activation Keys Attaching and Removing Subscriptions Through the Command Line Using and Configuring Red Hat Subscription Manager

Commands:
virt-install --name _vmname_ --memory 2048 --vcpus 2 --disk size=8,bus=virtio --location rhel-7.0-x86_64-dvd.iso --os-variant=rhel7.0
gcloud projects create my-gcp-project3 --name project3
ssh-keygen -t rsa -f ~/.ssh/google_compute_engine
ssh -i ~/.ssh/google_compute_engine <username>@<instance_external_ip>
gcloud auth login
gsutil mb gs://bucket_name
qemu-img convert -f qcow2 -O raw rhel-sample.qcow2 disk.raw
tar --format=oldgnu -Sczf disk.raw.tar.gz disk.raw
gsutil cp disk.raw.tar.gz gs://bucket_name
gcloud compute images create my-image-name --source-uri gs://my-bucket-name/disk.raw.tar.gz
gcloud compute instances create myinstance3 --zone=us-central1-a --image test-iso2-image
gcloud compute instances list
ssh -i ~/.ssh/google_compute_engine <user_name>@<instance_external_ip>
subscription-manager register --auto-attach