Custom images for Google Compute Engine
It is possible to customize your Compute Engine instance by way of a startup script, which allows you to install the necessary software components and harden the image. An efficient method is to create a custom image with your specific needs of security configurations and image standards. There are three ways you can customize an image. The process of customization is generally referred to as image baking:
- Manual baking
- Automated baking
- Import an existing image
The images needs to be encrypted and that can be achieved either by using Google’s default encryption keys or by using your own encryptions keys (customer-managed encryption keys).
Changing or baking images offers the following benefits:
- Shorter boot time for applications to be ready
- A more stable environment for applications to be installed
- Easier to go back to older versions of the image
- During application startup, there are fewer...
