Google Cloud

Setting up an instance on Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Overview

The Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is where all of Google Cloud services are located and available via their console page. You will be accessing the Compute Engine service on GCP to create a virtual machine (VM) instance. This guide will help you get started with a basic instance you can use to become familiar with the whole process. Helpful tips on creating your sample instance are included below.

FCS-adaptor will work in Google Cloud Shell, but FCS-GX needs a bigger VM, therefore this document will focus on setting up a VM for FCS-GX.

Signing in and entering the GCP Console

Sign-in using your Google account: GCP Console

Launching a GCP Instance

Create an Instance

• Click the Create Instance button on the top header which will take you to the instance configuration page.
• Create a name for the instance, and include your login name as an easy way to track your VM.

Settings

• Select region and zone to create the instance.

Machine Configuration

• Select n2 for Series and n2-highmem-64 for Machine type in the dropdown menus.
  Note: this is where you can change the CPU and RAM requirements for your instance.

  A link is provided on the right side of the page to view Google's most recent Compute Engine pricing.

Boot Disk

• Change the boot disk to 470G. This will be enough to store the test-only and the all db.
  Note: this is where you can change the amount of disk space to which you have access.

Save and Create

• Click the Create button at the bottom.

Connecting to an Instance

You will need to follow Google's guide Connecting to instances to connect to your instance.

The command you will run from your Unix terminal looks like this:

gcloud compute ssh --zone "us-central1-a" "<instance name>"  --project "<project name>"

Once you are connected, you will be able to work in a Unix-like command line environment.

Installing Docker

You can now install Docker so you can run FCS-GX. To install Docker, follow the instructions on https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/debian/
The steps required are:

sudo apt-get remove docker docker-engine docker.io containerd runc

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install \
    ca-certificates \
    curl \
    gnupg \
    lsb-release

sudo mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg

echo \
  "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian \
  $(lsb_release -cs) stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-compose-plugin

sudo docker run hello-world

sudo groupadd docker
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Log out and log back in so that your group membership is re-evaluated. Verify that you can run docker commands without sudo.

docker run hello-world

Running FCS-GX

You can now follow the instructions in the FCS-GX wiki.

Copying files to and from a VM

Before you delete a VM, you need to save your output files to your GCP bucket, and then to a local directory. You can do this using gsutil
To save to a bucket, do this from the VM:

gsutil cp *.txt gs://my-bucket

To save to a local directory, do this from your local terminal:

gsutil cp gs://my-bucket/*.txt .

Similary, you can copy from your local directory to the bucket, and then to the VM.

Stopping your instance

Don't forget to STOP your instance after you finish your work!

Useful resources

Install the Google Cloud CLI
Stop and start a VM
Delete a VM
Copy files and objects