Category Command Line Interface

The primary distinction between Persistent disk and network file storage, as the name suggests, provides a disk storage over the network. This makes it possible to create systems with many parallel services that are able to read and write files from the same disc storage that is mounted across the network. These systems may be developed with the help of this capability.

The following are some examples of uses for Filestore:

• Majority of the on-premises applications needs a file system interface, Filestore makes it easy to migrate these kind of enterprise applications to the cloud
  • It is used in the rendering of media in order to decrease latency.
• Cloud Storage: The service for storing objects that is provided by Google Cloud is known as Google Cloud Storage. It offers a number of extremely intriguing features that are pre-installed, such as object versioning and fine-grained permissions (either by object or bucket), both of which have the potential to simplify the development process and cut down on operational overhead. The Google Cloud Storage platform is used as the basis for a variety of different services.

Having this kind of storage is not at all usual in ordinary on-premises systems, which often have a capacity that is more restricted and connection that is both quick and exclusive. Object storage, on the other hand, has a very user-friendly interface in terms of how it works. In layman’s words, its value proposition is such that you are able to acquire and put whatever file you want using a REST API; in addition, this may extend forever with each object expanding up to the terabyte scale; and last, its value proposition is such that it is possible to store any amount of data. Buckets are the namespaces that are used in Cloud Storage to organize the many items that are stored there. Even while a bucket has the capacity to carry a number of items, each individual item will only ever belong to a single bucket.

The inexpensive cost of this storage type (cents per GB), along with its serverless approach and its ease of use, has contributed to its widespread adoption in cloud-native system architectures. The cloud service provider is then responsible for handling the laborious tasks of data replication, availability, integrity checks, capacity planning, and so on. APIs make it possible for applications to both save and retrieve items.

Based on factors like cost, availability, and frequency of access, cloud storage has four different storage classes. They are Standard, Nearline, Coldline, and Archive as shown in Figure 1.19:

Figure 1.19: GCP Storage

• Standard class: This class of storage allows for high frequency access and is the type of storage that is most often used by software developers.
• Nearline storage class: This class is used for data that are not accessed very regularly, generally for data that are not accessed more than once a month. Generally speaking, nearline storage is used for data.
• Lowline storage class: This class is used for records that are normally accessed not more often than once every three months.
• Archive storage class: This class is used for data that is accessed with the lowest frequency and is often used for the long-term preservation of data.

You may control your development process and your GCP resources using the gcloud command-line tool provided by the Google Cloud SDK, if you are a developer. To get command-line access to Google Cloud’s computational resources, you may use the Cloud Shell. With a 5-GB home directory, Cloud Shell is a Debian-based virtual computer from which you can easily manage your GCP projects and resources. Cloud Shell is pre-installed with the gcloud command-line tool and other necessary tools, allowing you to get up and running fast. To use cloud shell, follow the steps below:

Activate Cloud shell as shown in Figure 1.17:

Figure 1.17: GCP CLI

Click on Activate cloud shell.It will take few mins to open the Cloud shell command window

Once the cloud shell is activated, black space appears at the bottom of the screen to type commands as shown in Figure 1.18:

Figure 1.18: GCP CLI

1. Type commands:

gcloud projects create project_id – For Project creation

gcloud projects delete project_id – For project deletion

APIs

It is common for apps to communicate with Google Cloud via Software Development Kit (SDK). Go, Python, and node.js are few of the many programming languages for which Google Cloud SDKs are available.

Note: We will use this method while getting predictions from the deployed models.

Storage

Along with computing and network, storage is considered to be one of the fundamental building components. Applications benefit from storage services’ increased levels of persistence and durability. These services are located deep inside the platform and serve as the foundation for the vast majority of Google Cloud’s services as well as the systems that you construct on top of it. They are the platform’s central pillars.

Three types of storage options are provided by Google Cloud:

• Persistent Disks
• Filestore
• Cloud Storage (GCS)

They are explained as follows:

• Persistent Disks: Block storage is provided by a Google Cloud Persistent Disk, which is used by virtual machine hosted on Google Cloud (Google Cloud Compute Engine). Imagine those Persistent Disks as simple USB sticks; this will help you comprehend it far better than any other method. They may be connected to virtual machines or detached from them. They allow you to construct data persistence for your services whether virtual machines are started, paused, or terminated. These Persistent Disks are put to use to power not just the virtual machines that are hosted on Google Cloud Compute Engine, but also the Google Kubernetes Engine service.

A Google Cloud Persistent Disk operates similarly to a virtual disc on your local PC. Persistent Disk can either be HDD or SSD, with the latter offering superior I/O performance. In addition, there is the choice of where they are placed as well as the sort of availability that is required, which may be either regional, zonal, or local.

Other capabilities of Google Cloud Persistent Disks that are lesser known but are prove useful include automatic encryption, the ability to resize the disc while it is being used, and a snapshot capability that can be used for both backing up data and creating images for virtual machines. Read and write access can be configured for multiple VMs. One VM can have write access and all other VMs can have read access for a Persistent disk.

• Filestore: Filestore is a network file storage service that is provided by Google Cloud. The idea of network file storage has been around for quite some time, and similar to block storage, it can also be found in the on-premises data centers that most businesses use. You should be comfortable with the notion if you are used to dealing with NAS, which stands for network-attached storage. In response to the dearth of services that are compatible with network-attached storage (NAS), Google has expanded its offerings to include a cloud file storage service.

Google Cloud projects serve as the foundation for the creation, activation, and use of all Google Cloud services, such as managing APIs, enabling invoicing, adding and deleting collaborators, and managing permissions for Google Cloud resources.

Project can be created by following the steps in web console:

1. Navigation from IAM and admin | Manage resources. The sequence can be seen in Figure 1.12:

Figure 1.12: Project Creation

2. Click on CREATE PROJECT.

The project creation can be seen in the following figure:

Figure 1.13: Project Creation

3. Users to provide name for the project, follow the steps as shown in Figure 1.14:

Figure 1.14: Project Creation

1. Provide Project name.
2. Project ID will be automatically populated, users can edit it while creation of the project. If users need to access the resources under Project through SDK or APIs project-ID is needed. Once project is created users cannot change the Project-ID
3. If users are creating a project under Organization, select the organization. Users with free account cannot create organization or folder. All the projects will be created under No Organization.

Note: Users who are accessing through free account will be given limited amount of project creation.

Deletion of Project

To delete any project that is active:

1. Select the project that needs to be deleted.
2. Click on DELETE, users will be prompted for confirmation.

This can be seen illustrated in Figure 1.15:

Figure 1.15: Project deletion

Once the users will confirm the deletion of project, it will be marked for deletion and will be in same state for 30 days. Users can restore the project within a period of 30 days, post that project and the resources associated under that project will be deleted permanently and cannot be recovered back. Also, project which is marked under deletion is not usable.

Interacting with GCP services

When we talk about resources, let us discuss how we can work with them. GCP offers three basic ways to interact with the services and resources:

Google Cloud Platform Console

When working with Google Cloud, the Console or Web User Interface is the most common method of communication. At the same time, it delivers a wealth of functionality and an easy-to-use interface for the users who are just getting started with GCP.

Cloud console can be accessed with the link https://console.cloud.google.com.

Landing page of the google cloud console is as shown in Figure 1.16:

Figure 1.16: GCP Console

The term resource is used to describe anything that is put to use on Google Cloud Platform. Everything in the Google cloud has a clear hierarchy that resembles a parent-child connection. Hierarchy followed in Google Cloud Platform is as shown in Figure 1.11:

Figure 1.11: Hierarchy of GCP

The Organization node serves as the starting point for the GCP Hierarchy and may stand for either an organization or a firm. The organization is the progenitor of both the folder and the project, as well as their respective resources. The rules for controlling access that have been implemented on the organization are applicable to all of the projects and resources that are affiliated with it.

But, if we establish an account with the personal mail ID as we did in the previous section, we would not be able to view the organization. On the other hand, if we login with our Google Workspace account and then start a project, the organization will be provided for us immediately. In addition, without organization, only a small number of the functions of the resource manager will be available.

Under organization we have folders. We are able to have an extra grouping mechanism at our disposal with the assistance of folders, and we may conceptualize this as a hierarchy of sub-organizations contained inside the larger organization. It is possible for a folder to have extra subfolders included inside it. You have the option of granting rights to access the project and all of its resources, either completely or partially, depending on the folder in question.

A project is an entity that exists at the most fundamental level. It is possible to have many projects nested inside of organization’s and folders. The project is absolutely necessary in order to make use of GCP resources, and it serves as the foundation for making use of cloud services, managing APIs, and enabling billing. A project has two different IDs connected with it. The first of these is the project ID, which is a one-of-a-kind identification for the project. And the second one is the project number, which is automatically issued whenever a project is created, and we are unable to modify it in any way.

The term resources refers to the components that make up Google Cloud Platform. Resources include things like cloud storage, databases, virtual machines, and so on. Each time we establish a cloud storage bucket or deploy a virtual machine, we link those resources to the appropriate project.

Google Cloud Platform is one of the hyper scale infrastructure providers in the industry. It is a collection of cloud computing services that are offered by Google. These services operate on the same infrastructure that Google employs for its end-user products, including YouTube, Gmail, and a number of other offerings. The Google Cloud Platform provides a wide range of services, such as computing, storage, and networking, among other things.

Google Cloud Platform was first launched in 2008, and as of now, it is the third cloud platform that sees the most widespread use. Additionally, there is a growing need for platforms that are hosted on the cloud.

The Google cloud gives us a service-centric perspective of all our environments in addition to providing a standard platform and data analysis for deployments, regardless of where they are physically located. Using the capabilities of sophisticated analytics and machine learning offered by Google Cloud, we can extract the most useful insights from our data. Users will be able to automate procedures, generate predictions, and simplify administration and operations with the support of Google’s serverless data analytics and machine learning platform. The services provided by Google Cloud encrypt data while it is stored, while it is being sent, and while it is being used. Advanced security mechanisms protect the privacy of data.

Account creation on Google Cloud Platform

Users can create free GCP account from the link https://cloud.google.com/free.

Free account provides 300$ credit for a period of 90 days.

Steps for creating a free account are as follows:

1. Open https://cloud.google.com/free.
2. Click on Get started for free.

The opening screen looks like Figure 1.2:

Figure 1.2: GCP account creation

3. Login with your Gmail credentials, create one if you do not have. This can be seen illustrated in Figure 1.3:

Figure 1.3: GCP account creation enter valid mail address

4. Selection of COUNTRY and needs:

Figure 1.4: GCP account creation country selection

5. Select the Country and project. Check the Terms of service and click on CONTINUE.
6. Provide phone number for the identity verification as shown in Figure 1.5:

Figure 1.5: GCP account creation enter phone number

7. Free accounts require a credit card. Verification costs Rs 2. Addresses must be provided. Click on START MY FREE TRIAL on this page:

Figure 1.6: GCP account creation enter valid credit card details

8. Users will land into this page once the free trail has started. The welcome page can be seen in Figure 1.7:

Figure 1.7: Landing page of GCP

Since the beginning of the previous decade, the expansion of data has followed an exponential pattern, and this trend is expected to continue. The safe and secure storage of data should be one of the top priorities of every company. The cloud is usually the top option when it comes to storing and processing the enormous quantity of data since it has all of the advantages that were discussed above. As a consequence of this, a data scientist in today’s world has to have experience with cloud computing in addition to their expertise in statistics, machine learning algorithms, and other areas.

However, due to the low processing capacity of their CPU, they are unable to carry out these responsibilities in a timely way, assuming that they are even capable of doing so at all. In addition, the memory of the machine is often incapable of storing massive datasets because of their size. It determines how quickly the assignment is performed and how well it was accomplished overall. Data scientists are now able to investigate more extensive collections of data without being constrained by the capabilities of their local workstations thanks to the cloud. Utilizing the cloud might result in a decrease in the cost of infrastructure since it eliminates the requirement for a physical server. In addition, depending on the cloud for data storage can lead to a reduction in the cost of infrastructure. In addition to offering data storage services, many cloud platforms including google cloud platform also has other services caterings to data ingestion, data processing, analytics, AI and data visualization.

Types of Cloud

There are three types of cloud based on different capabilities:

• Public Cloud
• Private Cloud
• Hybrid Cloud

Public Cloud: The public cloud is a massive collection of readily available computing resources, including networking, memory, processing elements, and storage. Users can rent these resources, which are housed in one of the public cloud vendors globally dispersed and fully managed datacenters, to create your IT architecture. Using a web browser, users have access to your resources in this form of cloud. Google Cloud Platform is an example for Public Cloud.

A major advantage of the public cloud is that the underlying hardware and logic are hosted, owned, and maintained by each vendor. Customers are not responsible for purchasing or maintaining the physical components that comprise their public cloud IT solutions. In addition, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) bind each provider to a monthly uptime percentage and security guarantee in accordance with regulations.

Private Cloud: Unlike public clouds, private clouds are owned and operated only by a single organization. They have usually been housed in the company’s datacenter and run on the organization ‘s own equipment. To host their private cloud on their equipment, however, an organization may use a third-party supplier. Even if the resources are housed in a remotely managed datacenter, private cloud has certain characteristics with public cloud in this case. They may be able to provide certain administrative services but they would not be able to offer the full range of public cloud services.

If the private cloud is housed in your own datacenter, organization have complete control over the whole system. A self-hosted private cloud may help to comply with some of the stricter security and compliance regulations.

Hybrid Cloud: This kind of cloud computing is a blend and integration of both public and private clouds, as the name of this form of cloud computing indicates. In this manner, it will be able to provide you with the advantages associated with a variety of cloud kinds when it comes to cloud computing. It enables a larger degree of flexibility in terms of the transmission of data and expands the alternatives available to a company for its adoption. This guarantees a high level of control as well as an easy transition while giving everything at rates that are more economical.

There are various advantages of cloud as shown in Figure 1.1, and mentioned as follows:

Figure 1.1: Advantages of Cloud platform

• Cost efficiency: In terms of IT infrastructure management, cloud computing is undoubtedly the most cost-effective option. It is incredibly affordable for organizations of any size to transition from on-premises hardware to the cloud thanks to a variety of pay-as-you-go and other scalable choices. Using cloud resources instead of purchasing costly server equipment and PCs that need a lot of time to set up and maintain, such as long hours of setup and maintenance. Cloud also helps in reduced spending on compute, storage, network, operational and upgrade expenses.
• Scalability and elasticity: Overall, cloud hosting is more flexible than hosting on a local machine. You do not have to undertake a costly (and time-consuming) upgrade to your IT infrastructure if you need more bandwidth. This increased degree of latitude and adaptability may have a major impact on productivity.

Elasticity is only employed for a short amount of time to deal with rapid shifts in workload. This is a short-term strategy used to meet spikes in demand, whether they are unanticipated or seasonal. The static increase in workload is met through scalability. To cope with an anticipated rise in demand, a long-term approach to scalability is used.

• Security: Cloud platform provides a multitude of cutting-edge security measures, which ensure the safe storage and management of any data. Granular permissions and access control using federated roles are two examples of features that may help limit access to sensitive data to just those workers who have a legitimate need for it. This helps reduce the attack surface that is available to hostile actors. Authentication, access control, and encryption are some of the fundamental safeguards that providers of cloud storage put in place to secure their platforms and the data that is processed on those platforms. After that, users can implement additional security measures of their own, in addition to these precautions, to further strengthen cloud data protection and restrict access to sensitive information stored in the cloud.
• Availability: The vast majority of cloud service providers are quite dependable in terms of the provision of their services; in fact, the vast majority of them maintain an uptime of 99.9 percent. Moving to the cloud should be done with the intention of achieving high availability. The goal is to make your company’s goods, services, and tools accessible to your clients and workers at any time of day and from any location in the world using any device that can connect to the internet.
• Reduced downtime: Cloud based solutions provide the ability to operate critical systems and data directly from the cloud or to restore them to any location. During a catastrophic event involving information technology, they make it easier for you to get these systems back online, reducing the amount of manual work required by conventional recovery techniques.
• Increased Collaboration: Developers, QA, operations, security, and product architects are all exposed to the same infrastructure and may work concurrently without tripping on one another’s toes in cloud settings. To minimize disputes and misunderstanding, cloud roles and permissions provide more visibility and monitoring of who performed what and when. Different cloud environments, such as staging, QA, demo, and pre-production, may be created for specialized reasons. The cloud makes transparent collaboration simpler and promotes it.
• Insight: A bird’s-eye perspective of your data is also provided through the integrated cloud analytics that are offered by cloud platforms. When your data is kept in the cloud, it is much simpler to put in place, monitoring systems and create individualized reports for doing information analysis throughout the whole organization. You will be able to improve efficiency and construct action plans based on these insights, which will allow your organization to fulfil its objectives.
• Control over data: Cloud provides you total visibility and control over your data. You have complete control over which users are granted access to which levels of specified data. This not only gives you control, but also helps simplify work by ensuring that staff members are aware of the tasks they have been allocated. Additionally, it will make working together much simpler. Because several users may make edits to the same copy of the text at the same time, there is no need that multiple copies of the document be distributed to the public.
• Automatic software updates: There is nothing more cumbersome than being required to wait for the installation of system upgrades, especially for those who already have a lot on their plates. Applications that are hosted in the cloud instantly refresh and update themselves, eliminating the need for an IT personnel to carry out manual updates for the whole organization. This saves critical time and money that would have been spent on consulting from other sources.
• Ease of managing: The use of cloud can streamline and improve IT maintenance and management capabilities through the use of agreements supported by SLA, centralized resource administration, and managed infrastructure. Users can take advantage of a simple user interface without having to worry about installing anything. In addition, users are provided with management, maintenance, and delivery of the IT services.

To deploy the environment, you need to run the Terraform commands in the terraform directory.

First, initialize Terraform to download the needed plugins with:

terraform
init

Then check that you have set the required variables in your terraform.tfvars with:

terraform
validate

All being well, you should see Success! The configuration is valid.

Although Terraform can enable Google Services, and these scripts do, it can be unreliable as services take time to enable. Use the enable_service.sh script to enable services with gcloud:

./enable_services.sh

Terraform will then show how many items would be added, changed, or destroyed. If you have not run Terraform on the projects before, you should see a lot of items to be added.

When you are ready, run the apply command:

terraform
apply

Again, Terraform will devise a plan for meeting the desired state. This time, it will prompt you to approve applying the plan. Enter yes and watch while Terraform creates everything from this book for you. This may take 30 minutes, the majority of which will be the creation of the Cloud SQL database used by the fact service.

When completed, you will see several outputs from Terraform that look like this:

application-project = “skillsmapper-application”
git-commit = “3ecff393be00e331bb4412f4dc24a3caab2e0ab8”
management-project = “skillsmapper-management”
public-domain = “skillsmapper.org”
public-ip = “34.36.189.201”
tfstate_bucket_name = “d87cf08d1d01901c-bucket-tfstate”

The public-ip is the external IP of the global load balancer. Use this to create an A record in your DNS provider for the domain you provided.

Reapplying Terraform

If you make a change to the Terraform configuration, there are a few things you need to do before deploying Terraform again.

First, make sure you are using the application project:

gcloud
config
set
project
$APPLICATION_PROJECT_ID

Terraform is unable to change the API Gateway configuration, so you will need to delete it and allow Terraform to recreate it.

Also, if Cloud Run has deployed new versions of the services, you will need to remove them and allow Terraform to recreate them, too, as Terraform will have the wrong version.

This time you will notice only a few added, changed, or destroyed resources, as Terraform only applies the differences to what is already there.

Deleting Everything

When you have finished with Skills Mapper, you can also use Terraform to clean up completely using:

terraform
destroy

This will remove all the infrastructure that Terraform has created.

At this point, you may also like to unlink the billing accounts from the projects so they can no longer be billed: gcloud
beta
billing
projects
unlink
$APPLICATION_PROJECT_ID
gcloud
beta
billing
projects
unlink
$MANAGEMENT_PROJECT_ID

Terraform records the state of all the infrastructure it has created so that when the configuration is applied, it only makes the changes needed to get the infrastructure to the desired state. There could be no changes, the configuration could have been changed, or the infrastructure could have been changed outside Terraform, for example by someone issuing gcloud commands. Terraform will work out what needs to be done to get to the desired state.

By default, Terraform keeps this state on the machine that was used to apply the configuration. This means it cannot be shared. Alternatively, Terraform state can store the state of the infrastructure in a backend. In the case of Google Cloud, you can use a Cloud Storage bucket for this purpose.

Create a Cloud Storage bucket to store the Terraform state using gcloud in the management project. As bucket names need to be unique, using the project number as a suffix is a good way to ensure this.

Configure Identity Platform

In Chapter 7, you enabled Identity Platform. If you have created a new application project, you will need to enable it again in the project and make a note of the API key, as you will need to pass it to Terraform as a variable.

Setting Terraform Variables

Terraform uses variables to customize the configuration. These are defined in a terraform.tfvars file in the terraform directory. Many of these have defaults you can override, but you will need to set the following variables before deployment.

Create a terraform.tfvars file in the terraform directory with the following content:

Key	Example value	Description
domain	skillsmapper.org	The domain name to use for the environment
region	europe-west2	The region to deploy the environment to
billing_account	014…	The ID of the billing account associated with your projects
management_project_id	skillsmapper-management	The ID of the management project
application_project_id	skillsmapper-application	The ID of the application project
api_key	AIzaSyC…	The API key for Identity Platform
app_installation_id	skillsmapper	The ID of the app installation for GitHub used when setting up the factory
github_repo	https://github.com/SkillsMapper/skillsmapper.git	The name of the GitHub repository to use for the factory
github_token	ghp_…	The GitHub token to use for the factory

If you have set all the environment variables for other chapters in this book, you can generate the terraform.tfvars from the file terraform.tfvars.template in the example code:

envsubst
<
terraform.tfvars.template
>
terraform.tfvars

With this file created, you are ready to deploy using Terraform.

In most of this book, you have been using gcloud commands to deploy everything. If you wanted to ship the product, you could do what I have done in the book and produce a step-by-step guide to the commands. However, it is easy to make a mistake when following instructions. What would be much better is to automate all those commands in a way that could consistently deploy everything for you with a single command.

One option would be to put all the commands in shell scripts. However, when using gcloud commands you are effectively calling the Google Cloud API in the background. What is better is to use a tool that makes the same API calls but is designed for this type of automation. This is the principle of infrastructure as code (IaC).

In this appendix, you have the opportunity to set up everything discussed in this book in one go with automation.

Note

The code for this chapter is in the terraform folder of the GitHub repository.

Reintroducing Terraform

The tool designated for automating the creation of infrastructure in this context is Terraform, an open source offering from HashiCorp. Terraform exemplifies an IaC tool, a concept briefly explored in Chapter 5 when it was utilized to deploy the tag updater.

While Google Cloud offers a similar tool called Deployment Manager, it is limited to supporting only Google Cloud. On the other hand, Terraform’s applicability extends to all public clouds and various other types of infrastructure. This broader compatibility has made Terraform more widely accepted, even within the Google Cloud ecosystem.

To understand the distinction between using Terraform and manual methods like gcloud commands or shell scripts, consider the difference between imperative and declarative approaches:

Imperative approach

Using gcloud commands or shell scripts is an imperative method. Here, you act as a micromanaging manager, explicitly directing the Google Cloud API on what actions to perform and how to execute them.

Declarative approach

Terraform operates on a declarative principle. Instead of micromanaging each step, you define a specific goal, and Terraform takes the necessary actions to achieve it. This approach is similar to how Kubernetes functions; you declare the desired state, and the tool works to realize that state.

The declarative nature of Terraform allows for a more streamlined and efficient process, aligning the tool with the objectives without requiring detailed command over each step.

What Terraform is effectively doing is taking the destination defined as a YAML configuration and working out the route to get there, provisioning the entire secure environment. This is reproducible and repeatable, so if you wanted to have multiple environments with the same configuration (e.g., dev, QA, and prod) you could build them with the same recipe, ensuring a consistent product.

Terraform also allows you to specify variables and compute values to customize the deployment. It also understands the dependencies between resources and creates them in the right order. Most importantly, it keeps track of everything that is created; if you want to remove everything, it can clean up after itself.

The code used to define the desired state also acts as a way of documenting all the infrastructure. If anyone wants to understand all the infrastructure used in the system, the Terraform configuration is a central source of truth. As it is code, it can be shared in a source code repository and versioned with an audited history. This means developers can issue pull requests for changes, for example, rather than having to raise tickets with an operations team. It is a great example of how a tool enables DevOps or SRE practices.

This appendix is here to help you use Terraform to deploy your own Skills Mapper environment. It is not intended to go into Terraform in depth. For that, I recommend the Terraform documentation or Terraform: Up and Running (O’Reilly) by Yevgeniy Brikman.