# Secure Cloud Computing: How to Deploy and Connect to a Google Cloud VM

## Pre-requisites

1. Have a Google Cloud (GCP) account
    
2. Some knowledge of SSH and how it works
    

## Step 1: Create SSH keys

We will connect to a GCP virtual server using SSH to ensure secure communication between our local environment and the remote virtual server.

```bash
$ ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "containers"
```

This command will generate an **SSH key pair**. To learn more, visit [this page](https://www.ssh.com/academy/ssh/keygen).

## Step 2: Create a new GCP project

On the console, create a new project to create the Google Compute Engine (GCE) virtual server, that we will connect to later.

## Step 3: Configure a virtual network

We need to create a Google VPC network. From the console go to the VPC networks page, and click `Create VPC network`. Name the VPC something like "container-vpc", and select the **Automatic** subnet creation mode, which only supports IPv4. Don't worry about firewall rules (later step), and click `Create`.

## Step 4: Create a firewall

Once the virtual network has been created, a firewall rule needs to be created and configured to allow inbound SSH traffic.  
In our case, we can create a firewall rule named `allow-inbound-ssh-traffic` which allows traffic from anywhere using `0.0.0.0/0` as the IP range, and `ssh` as the allowed protocol.

## Step 5: Start a new VM instance

When creating a VM on Google Cloud, choosing E2 instances is recommended for standard workloads like web servers, small-to-medium databases, development environments, and microservices that don't require specific hardware features.  
In terms of settings, it's important to attach the network created in step 3 to the new instance. For this lab, we have created a Ubuntu LTS 20.04 server, and configured the SSH key created in step 1. Once the settings are finished, we start the instance.

## Step 6: Test connectivity

We could connect to the new instance using Google's `SSH-in-browser` feature. However, this in-browser temrinal may not offer all the features we would use when remote managing a VM server.

```bash
$ ssh <username>@<public_ip>
The authenticity of host 'xx.xx.xxx.xx' can't be
established.
ECDSA key fingerprint is
SHA256: <some text>
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])?
$ yes
```

This last step should connect us to our remote cloud-hosted Ubuntu server.

```bash
user@ubuntu:~$
```