The elasticity of cloud resources
In this tutorial we will understand about the elasticity of Google cloud resources.
Google Cloud resources
Google Cloud consists of a set of physical assets, such as computers and hard disk drives, and virtual resources, such as virtual machines (VMs), that are contained in Google’s data centers around the globe. Each data center location is in a region. However, regions are available in Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. Each region is a collection of zones, which are isolated from each other within the region.
Further, this distribution of resources provides several benefits, including redundancy in case of failure and reduced latency by locating resources closer to clients. This distribution also introduces some rules about how resources can be used together.
Accessing resources through services
In cloud computing, what you might be used to thinking of as software and hardware products, become services. These services provide access to the underlying resources. However, the list of available Google Cloud services is long, and it keeps growing. When you develop your website or application on Google Cloud, you mix and match these services into combinations that provide the infrastructure you need. Then, add your code to enable the scenarios you want to build.
Projects
Any Google Cloud resources that you allocate and use must belong to a project. You can think of a project as the organizing entity for what you’re building. However, a project is made up of the settings, permissions, and other metadata that describe your applications. Resources within a single project can work together easily. For example, by communicating through an internal network, subject to the regions-and-zones rules. A project can’t access another project’s resources unless you use Shared VPC or VPC Network Peering.
Each Google Cloud project has the following:
- Firstly, a project name, which you provide.
- Secondly, a project ID, which you can provide or Google Cloud can provide for you.
- Lastly, a project number, which Google Cloud provides.
However, Each project ID is unique across Google Cloud. Once you have created a project, you can delete the project but its ID can never be used again.
Command-line interface
If you prefer to work at the command line, you can perform most Google Cloud tasks by using the gcloud command-line tool. However, the gcloud tool lets you manage development workflow and Google Cloud resources in a terminal window.
For example, you can create a new Compute Engine virtual machine named example-instance using a command like the following example:
gcloud compute instances create example-instance \
–image-family=rhel-8 \
–image-project=rhel-cloud\
–zone=us-central1-a
Further, you can run gcloud commands in the following ways:
- Firstly, you can install the Cloud SDK. The SDK includes the gcloud tool, so you can open a terminal window on your own computer and run commands to manage Google Cloud resources.
- Secondly, you can use Cloud Shell, which is a browser-based shell. Because it runs in a browser window, you don’t need to install anything on your own computer. You can open the Cloud Shell from the Google Cloud Console.
Cloud Shell provides the following:
- Firstly, a temporary Compute Engine virtual machine instance.
- Secondly, a built-in code editor.
- Thirdly, 5 GB of persistent disk storage.
- Next, pre-installed Cloud SDK and other tools.
- Language support for Java, Go, Python, Node.js, PHP, Ruby and .NET.
- After that, web preview functionality.
- Lastly, built-in authorization for access to Cloud Console projects and resources.
Reference: Google Documentation