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Cover image for Part-9: 🚀 Deploying a Web Server on Google Cloud VM with gcloud CLI (GCP)
Latchu@DevOps
Latchu@DevOps

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Part-9: 🚀 Deploying a Web Server on Google Cloud VM with gcloud CLI (GCP)

#gcp #cloud #learning #tutorial

Google Cloud provides multiple ways to manage infrastructure — you can use the Console UI, Cloud Shell, or the gcloud CLI. In this tutorial, we’ll use gcloud commands inside Cloud Shell to create a VM, install Nginx with a startup script, and manage lifecycle actions (start, stop, update, delete).

🔹 Step 1: Launch Cloud Shell

  • Open the Google Cloud Console → Click on the Cloud Shell icon (top-right corner).
  • Authorize the shell when prompted.
  • You’ll now have a terminal directly connected to your GCP environment with gcloud pre-installed.

gcloud-shell

🔹 Step 2: Upload Startup Script

Create a file called webserver-install.sh and paste the following script:

#!/bin/bash
sudo apt install -y telnet
sudo apt install -y nginx
sudo systemctl enable nginx
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html
HOSTNAME=$(hostname)
sudo echo "<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <body style='background-color:rgb(250, 210, 210);'>
<h1>Welcome to Latchu@DevOps - WebVM App1 </h1>
<p><strong>VM Hostname:</strong> $HOSTNAME</p>
<p><strong>VM IP Address:</strong> $(hostname -I)</p>
<p><strong>Application Version:</strong> V1</p>
<p>Google Cloud Platform - Demos</p>
</body></html>" | sudo tee /var/www/html/index.html
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Make it executable:

ls -lh
chmod +x webserver-install.sh
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This script installs Nginx and deploys a simple web page that displays hostname, IP address, and app version.

upload-script

🔹 Step 3: Configure gcloud Project

Set your active project:

gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID
gcloud config set project gcp-zero-to-hero-468909
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🔹 Step 4: Create a VM with Startup Script

Run the command to create a new VM and attach the startup script:

gcloud compute instances create demo3-vm-gcloud \
  --zone=us-central1-a \
  --machine-type=e2-micro \
  --network-interface=subnet=default \
  --tags=http-server \
  --metadata-from-file=startup-script=webserver-install.sh
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create-vm

🔹 Step 5: Manage the VM Lifecycle

👉 List instances

gcloud compute instances list
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list-vm

VM-console

👉 Stop the VM

gcloud compute instances stop demo3-vm-gcloud --zone=us-central1-a
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👉 Start the VM again

gcloud compute instances start demo3-vm-gcloud --zone=us-central1-a
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🔹 Step 6: Update Deletion Protection

👉 Enable deletion protection

gcloud compute instances update demo3-vm-gcloud \
    --zone=us-central1-a \
    --deletion-protection
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👉 Attempt to delete VM (this will fail 🚫)

gcloud compute instances delete demo3-vm-gcloud --zone=us-central1-a
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❌ Error:

ERROR: (gcloud.compute.instances.delete) Could not fetch resource:
 - Invalid resource usage: 'Resource cannot be deleted if it's protected against deletion.'
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failed-to-delete

👉 Disable deletion protection

gcloud compute instances update demo3-vm-gcloud \
    --zone=us-central1-a \
    --no-deletion-protection
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👉 Now delete the VM

gcloud compute instances delete demo3-vm-gcloud --zone=us-central1-a
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delete-vm

🎯 Final Thoughts

In this tutorial, we learned how to:

  • Use Cloud Shell with gcloud CLI
  • Deploy a VM with a startup script
  • Manage VM lifecycle: start, stop, list
  • Protect and safely delete VMs with deletion protection

This is a simple but powerful way to automate server setup on GCP. Instead of clicking through the console, you can script and repeat deployments with just a few commands.

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