Chapter 3. Deploying a Red Hat Enterprise Linux image as a Google Compute Engine instance on Google Cloud

Procedure

1. Create and start a basic Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) VM. For instructions, see Creating virtual machines.

   1. Set the default memory and CPUs to the capacity you need for the VM and the virtual network interface to virtio.

      For example, the following command creates a kvmtest VM by using the rhel-9.0-aarch64-kvm.qcow2 image:

      # virt-install \
          --name kvmtest --memory 2048 --vcpus 2 \
          --disk rhel-9.0-aarch64-kvm.qcow2,bus=virtio \
          --import --os-variant=rhel9.0

   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.

2. Review the following additional installation selection and modifications.

   • Select Minimal Install with the standard RHEL option.

   • For Installation Destination, select Custom Storage Configuration. Use the following configuration information to make your selections.

     • Ensure allocation of at least 500 MB and maximum 1 GB or more for /boot.
     • In the filesystem section, use the extended File System (XFS), ext4, or ext3 for both boot and root partitions.
   • On the Installation Summary screen, select Network and hostname. Switch Ethernet to ON.

3. When the installation starts:

   • Create a root password.
   • Create an administrative user account.
4. After installation is complete, reboot the VM.
5. Log in to the root account to configure the VM.

Procedure

1. Launch the Google Cloud Console.
2. Click the drop-down menu to the right of Google Cloud.
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 Google Cloud 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 Google Cloud instructions for downloading and extracting the Google Cloud SDK archive. See the Google Cloud 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 Google Cloud 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 by using standard SSH.

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

   Note that you can run the gcloud compute config-ssh command to display your config file with aliases for your instances. You can then connect to your instance by using the alias through SSH. For details, see gcloud compute config-ssh.

Procedure

1. If you are not already logged in to Google Cloud, 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-9.0-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 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 by using the Google Cloud 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. Optional: Find the image in the Google Cloud 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 Google Cloud 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. Optional: 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 Google Cloud 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. Ensure that your instance is running. The following 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 by 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

   Google Cloud 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

2. Attach your subscriptions.

   • You can use an activation key to attach subscriptions. See Creating Red Hat Customer Portal Activation Keys for more information.
   • Also, you can manually attach a subscription by using the ID of subscription pool (Pool ID). See Attaching a host-based subscription to hypervisors.

3. Optional: To collect various system metrics about the instance in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console, you can register the instance with Red Hat Lightspeed.

   # insights-client register --display-name <display_name_value>

   For information about further configuration of Red Hat Lightspeed, see Client Configuration Guide for Red Hat Lightspeed.