Develop a Website and Create a Virtual Machine Using Google Cloud Platform

Abstract

Cloud computing is increasingly popular for accessing computing resources. In practice, cloud service providers tend to offer services that can be divided into three categories: software as a service, platform as a service, and infrastructure as a service. In this paper, we introduce the concept of cloud computing, SaaS, IaaS, PaaS and highlighting the key concept of PaaS. Using a widely popular platform -google cloud platform (GCP)-, we develop and deploy a website and also create a virtual machine instance.

That helps us to provide a better understanding of PaaS and important of it.

Introduction

Cloud computing is the general term refers to provide access to a shared pool of configurable computer system resources (e.g. storage, database, platforms, servers, and other IT resources) rather than having it local to offer flexible resources and economies of scale. The services are delivered through web-based tools and application over the internet with a pay-as-you-go basis(pricing).

Cloud computing development model is divided into three main categories:

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS): which is the delivering of hardware (servers, storage, and networks) and associated software (operating system) to organizations Through virtualization technology.

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The IaaS are self-service models, the users have direct access to their servers and storage through a dashboard or an API, and complete control over the entire infrastructure. and it is usually provided on an on-demand and as-needed model. Common example: Microsoft Azure, Amazon web service

and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): Software as a Service, or cloud application services, represent the most common in the cloud market.

SaaS utilizes the internet to deliver the applications to the users, and it's managed by a third-party vendor. Most of SaaS applications can run directly through the web browser and do not have to downloads or installations on the user side. Software upgrades, technical issues, server, storage, and other maintenance are performed and managed by the provider. And its typically provided through a subscription or on-demand model. Common example: Gmail, dropbox, google apps

And the last who is our main subject is Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): PaaS utilizes the internet to deliver applications, a platform, and environment to the developer so they can build and run their application. PaaS provider offering the hardware, operating system and other resources necessary for hosting. Common example: OpenShift, google app engine.

The application market is increasing and growing up quickly day by day and PaaS services play an important role in it. PaaS makes the developing and programming easier to the developer so they can focus on code without taking care of management processes. And without PaaS services, applications Will have not become widespread in this way.

In order to deploy a website There are many examples for PaaS like Windows Azure, Heroku, OpenShift and Aptana cloud, and also create VM it will be necessary to determine a suitable platform for that. in this paper we choose to use google cloud platform as the most suitable for our requirement.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) :

Google Cloud Platform is a suite of public cloud computing services and it provides dozens of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS services offered by Google. The platform includes a large set of physical assets such as computers, hard disk, processors and virtual assets such as Virtual Machines, services that are contained in Google Cloud data centers. Google Cloud Platform services can be accessed by software developers, cloud administrators and other enterprise IT professionals over the public internet or through a dedicated network connection.

Like other public cloud offerings, most Google Cloud Platform services follow a pay-as-you-go model in which there are no upfront payments, and users only pay for the cloud resources they consume. Specific terms and rates, however, vary from service to service.

They provide a 12-month free trial with $300 in your credit card to spend in GCP services. And this what I was used for this project.

Google App Engine: Google App Engine allow you to build and host applications on the same systems that power Google applications. App Engine offers fast development and deployment; simple administration, with no need to worry about servers, hardware, patches or backups; and also effortless scalability.

Implementation

Develop and deploy a website on Google App Engine:

•  Website(XO-game):

Tic-tac-toe (also known as XO-game) is a game for two players, X and O, who take turns marking the spaces in a 3×3 grid. The player who succeeds in placing three of their marks in a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal row wins the game.

(in this code it is between HUMAN and COMPUTER). In the first we let the player choose the symbol he wants X or O, if he chooses X he will start first if he chooses O he will start secondly. After that They will exchange the role until one of them win or if no one wins then it leads to a tie game.

We choose to use the Minimax algorithm for this game, it is a kind of recursive algorithm that is used in decision making and game theory to find the optimal move for the player. It is widely used in two player turn-based games such as Tic-Tac-Toe, Mancala, Backgammon, Chess, etc.

The code for the website is written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript languages

•  Requirement:
•  Domain name.
•  Install Google Cloud SDK
•  Implementation step:

1. Install and initialize the Google Cloud SDK
2. Create a directory that has the name (tactile-octagon-234817) as my project ID in my application's root directory:
3. In (tactile-octagon-234817) directory, create a file named app.yaml.
4. Create www/: Directory to store all static files for the website, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
5.  add the following code to the app.yaml file.
6. To deploy the website run the following command with the name of the directory:

Map custom domain to the website:

1. Purchase the (xogametrial.tk) domain from freenom.
2.  From Google Cloud Platform Console, go to App Engine > Settings > Custom Domains and Click Add a custom domain:
3.  In the Select the domain you want to use section, enter the name of the domain, see figure 6.
4. Before going to the next step you need to verify the ownership of the domain by adding using a TXT record as you see in figure 5.

Click on Done button and It can take a while for these changes to take effect.

Creating Virtual Machine:

•  Requirement:
•  RDP extension for chrome browser
•  Implementation step:

Using Google Cloud Platform Console navigate from Compute engine to VM instances to create

here I select the name (instance-1) for this instance. And Specify the zone in which I want to create this instance. You can select the machine type that you want to use for the instance. And also customize and create your own machine type.

For this instance, I choose windows operation system as a boot disk that I want to use to boot this virtual machine from.

As you can see in the left side The cost is calculated monthly depending on the selections, and it paid with the free trial and $300 credit card. After click on the create button and wait for a few minutes the instance is created and it shows a green checkmark with the name of the instance as you can see in figure 8.

To run the VM-instance use the plugin in figure 9 to connect to the remote desktops of the Windows Server instance running on Google Compute Engine. Once installed, we just need only click on the RDP button in the Google Developers Console to be taken directly to the remote desktop of the instance that we made without the need to use an additional software client.

Conclusion

The cloud platform has become very prevalent and has helped startup companies as well as enterprises reduce cost and deploy applications quickly compared with the traditional way of developing applications. In particular, we use the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), which includes a range of public cloud solutions for the enterprise. GCP provides an easy to use interface, pay-as-you-use model and fast configuration and scalable in comparison to a different platform which makes Google one of the best cloud service provider.

References

1. www.xogametrial.tk/
2.  https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python/getting-started/hosting-a-static-website#what’s_next
3.  https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python/mapping-custom-domains
4.  https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/#instances_and_containers
5.  GitHub. (2019). beaucarnes/fcc-project-tutorials. [online] Available at: https://github.com/beaucarnes/fcc-project-tutorials/tree/master/tictactoe/7 [Accessed 18 Mar. 2019].