As promised, I present to you a trilogy of short tutorials allowing you to learn some of the basics of Google Compute Platform/Engine (GCP/E). The knowledge you gain from these tutorials will allow you to host a B4J (or any other .jar) console app on a Virtual Machine (VM). By ‘console’ I mean ANY console app including a web app because a web app is simply just another console app. You will also need to have a credit card handy to sign up for the free stuff offered by Google - I know, I know!? It’s free so why do you need to provide credit card details?? Well, I’ve got nothing helpful to add there.
Disclaimer: Before we continue I just want to say that I am not an expert! I have had to learn this stuff the hard way and yes, I’ve made plenty of noob mistakes along the way. I’ll do my best to help steer you through the cloud and come to terms with some of the technical thingys that get will cross your path. If you follow along EXACTLY as written/stated then you will have a working B4J console app running on a GCE VM.
I have tried to make the tutorials easy to follow along and to read. I’ve read manuals that have given me mental paralysis after a couple of pages and I have tried to avoid that.
I’ll also be showing you how I do things. There are other ways of doing things of course, but I’ll be showing how to do things using the tools that I use. Don’t worry! I’m sure that most of you, reading this, are already using the same tools. Below is a comprehensive and very long list of the tools that I use. Make sure that you have them all installed and ready to follow along. If you need to clear out some space on your hard disk now would be a good time to do it.
List of the tools I use:
).
BTW, in case you’re wondering what a ‘noob’ is, and even if you’re not, a ‘noob’ is someone that is new to something that lesser noobs enjoy having around because it makes them feel less like a noob. In other words, a noob is someone new to something. We’re all noobs at everything - it’s a good thing!
Why do I use GCE? I find using GCE easier to use than Amazon Web Services (AWS). GCE’s terminology and naming conventions for most of the services on offer make more sense to me than those used by AWS. I will not be covering AWS in this tutorial or any other tutorial as I just do not grasp the naming conventions used by AWS.
Another reason why I use GCE (or any other Virtual Private Server (VPS) or Virtual Machine (VM)) is that I can use port 80 for my web apps! Yes, you heard right! Port 80! This is something that you just cannot easily do with shared web hosting. VM’s give you a lot of flexibility on the port/s you can use (with some exceptions) and gives you control over the resources the VM can have. By ‘resources’ I’m referring to the number of CPUs and the amount of RAM.
Okay, I’m going to wind this first tutorial up with a look at some of the topics that will be covered in future tutorials. The list is not comprehensive and I’m sure that more tutorials will be added over time and the list below will become out of date.
In following tutorials we’ll cover the following topics (not in any particular order):
Disclaimer: Before we continue I just want to say that I am not an expert! I have had to learn this stuff the hard way and yes, I’ve made plenty of noob mistakes along the way. I’ll do my best to help steer you through the cloud and come to terms with some of the technical thingys that get will cross your path. If you follow along EXACTLY as written/stated then you will have a working B4J console app running on a GCE VM.
I have tried to make the tutorials easy to follow along and to read. I’ve read manuals that have given me mental paralysis after a couple of pages and I have tried to avoid that.
I’ll also be showing you how I do things. There are other ways of doing things of course, but I’ll be showing how to do things using the tools that I use. Don’t worry! I’m sure that most of you, reading this, are already using the same tools. Below is a comprehensive and very long list of the tools that I use. Make sure that you have them all installed and ready to follow along. If you need to clear out some space on your hard disk now would be a good time to do it.
List of the tools I use:
- B4J
- Google Chrome (the browser)
).BTW, in case you’re wondering what a ‘noob’ is, and even if you’re not, a ‘noob’ is someone that is new to something that lesser noobs enjoy having around because it makes them feel less like a noob.
In other words, a noob is someone new to something. We’re all noobs at everything - it’s a good thing! Why do I use GCE? I find using GCE easier to use than Amazon Web Services (AWS). GCE’s terminology and naming conventions for most of the services on offer make more sense to me than those used by AWS. I will not be covering AWS in this tutorial or any other tutorial as I just do not grasp the naming conventions used by AWS.
Another reason why I use GCE (or any other Virtual Private Server (VPS) or Virtual Machine (VM)) is that I can use port 80 for my web apps! Yes, you heard right! Port 80! This is something that you just cannot easily do with shared web hosting. VM’s give you a lot of flexibility on the port/s you can use (with some exceptions) and gives you control over the resources the VM can have. By ‘resources’ I’m referring to the number of CPUs and the amount of RAM.
Okay, I’m going to wind this first tutorial up with a look at some of the topics that will be covered in future tutorials. The list is not comprehensive and I’m sure that more tutorials will be added over time and the list below will become out of date.
In following tutorials we’ll cover the following topics (not in any particular order):
- [GCE] For Noobs, Part 2 - Creating a Google Cloud Platform Account
- [GCE] For Noobs, Part 3 - Creating an Empty Virtual Machine
- [GCE] For Noobs, Part 4 - Connecting To Your Virtual Machine
- [GCE] For Noobs, Part 5 - Installing the Java Runtime Environment (JRE)
- [GCE] For Noobs, Part 6 - Installing MySQL / MariaDB
- [GCE] For Noobs, Part 7 - Changing MariaDB root Password
- [GCE] For Noobs, Part 8 - Installing A B4J Console App
- [GCE] For Noobs, Part 9 - Running Your B4J App
- [GCE] For Noobs, Part 10 - Running Your B4J App As A Service and Automatically Starting At Boot
- [GCE] For Noobs, Part 11 - Firewall
- [GCE] For Noobs, Part 12 - Static vs Ephemeral IP Addresses
- [GCE] For Noobs, Part 13 - Pricing Calculator Basics - What To Consider
- Installing PHP (coming soon)
- Installing Apache (coming soon)
- Creating a SendGrid account (coming soon)
This is required only if you need to send email from the GCM VM - Deploying VMs almost instantly using Cloud Launcher (coming soon)
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