VM Operations

Create VM instance:
gcloud compute instances create gcelab2 --machine-type n1-standard-2 --zone us-central1-c

List VM instances:
gcloud compute instances list

Connect to VM instance:
gcloud compute ssh gcelab2 --zone us-central1-c

Firewall Setup

Create a firewall rule to allow external traffic to the VM instances:
gcloud compute firewall-rules create www-firewall-network-lb --target-tags network-lb-tag --allow tcp:80

Debian Update

Update Debian:
apt-get update

Create an L4 Network Load Balancer

Create a static external IP address for your load balancer:
gcloud compute addresses create network-lb-ip-1 --region us-central1

Add a legacy HTTP health check resource:
gcloud compute http-health-checks create basic-check

Add a target pool in the same region as your instances:
gcloud compute target-pools create www-pool --region us-central1 --http-health-check basic-check

Add the instances to the pool:
gcloud compute target-pools add-instances www-pool --instances www1,www2,www3

Add the instances to the pool:
gcloud compute forwarding-rules create www-rule --region us-central1 --ports 80 --address network-lb-ip-1 --target-pool www-pool

Sending traffic to your instances:
gcloud compute forwarding-rules describe www-rule --region us-central1

Sending repeated traffic to your instances:
while true; do curl -m1 IP_ADDRESS; done

Create an L7 HTTP(S) Load Balancer

Create the load balancer template:
gcloud compute instance-templates create lb-backend-template --region=us-central1 --network=default --subnet=default --tags=allow-health-check --image-family=debian-9 --image-project=debian-cloud --metadata=startup-script='#! /bin/bash apt-get update apt-get install apache2 -y a2ensite default-ssl a2enmod ssl vm_hostname="$(curl -H "Metadata-Flavor:Google" http://169.254.169.254/computeMetadata/v1/instance/name)" echo "Page served from: $vm_hostname" | tee /var/www/html/index.html systemctl restart apache2'

Create a managed instance group based on the template:
gcloud compute instance-groups managed create lb-backend-group --template=lb-backend-template --size=2 --zone=us-central1-a

Create the firewall rule for health checks:
gcloud compute firewall-rules create fw-allow-health-check --network=default --action=allow --direction=ingress --source-ranges=130.211.0.0/22,35.191.0.0/16 --target-tags=allow-health-check --rules=tcp:80

Create a global static external IP address for your load balancer:
gcloud compute addresses create lb-ipv4-1 --ip-version=IPV4 --global

Note the IPv4 address that was reserved:
gcloud compute addresses describe lb-ipv4-1 --format="get(address)" --global

Create a health check for the load balancer:
gcloud compute health-checks create http http-basic-check --port 80

Create a backend service:
gcloud compute backend-services create web-backend-service --protocol=HTTP --port-name=http --health-checks=http-basic-check --global

Add your instance group as the backend to the backend service:
gcloud compute backend-services add-backend web-backend-service --instance-group=lb-backend-group --instance-group-zone=us-central1-a --global

Create a URL map to route incoming requests to the default backend service:
gcloud compute url-maps create web-map-http --default-service web-backend-service

Create a target HTTP proxy to route requests to your URL map:
gcloud compute target-http-proxies create http-lb-proxy --url-map web-map-http

Create a global forwarding rule to route incoming requests to the proxy:
gcloud compute forwarding-rules create http-content-rule --address=lb-ipv4-1 --global --target-http-proxy=http-lb-proxy --ports=80

NGINX Setup

Install NGINX and update:
apt-get install nginx -y

Check if NGINX is running:
ps auwx | grep nginx