Deploying our first GCE instance

Let's begin this chapter with the basics of provisioning a new VM. We can do this from the GCP console. In this section, we will look at the very basics needed to deploy a VM. We will look at the deployment options in more detail in the next section of this chapter:

1. First, we should sign into the GCP console, then browse to the navigation menu, and go to Compute Engine | VM instances, as shown in the following screenshot:

   Important Note

   You may be prompted to enable the Compute Engine API when using Compute Engine for the first time.

   Figure 4.1 – Browsing to VM instances

2. Click ENABLE to enable the Compute Engine API (this is a one-time enablement when we are creating our first Compute Engine instance):

   Figure 4.2 – Enabling API

3. Click CREATE INSTANCE, as shown in the following screenshot:

   Figure 4.3 – Creating an instance

4. Give your VM a name; in this example, we called it cloudarchitect. We can select a region...