openSUSE Leap 42.3 on Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Blogging... I'm glad I started in 2008, it is like having a diary that you can never misplace... and reading some old entries can bring back wonderful memories, as I recall and review the course of my life from this, albeit narrow, technology perspective.

Anyway, its been a good 4+ years since my last entry and the longest hiatus... glad and grateful to say that I am now working for Google.  My personal Linux passion is still very much alive and personal bias towards all things SUSE (more openSUSE since 2011).

Problem Statement:

So, it is May 2018 and I am little disappointed that openSUSE Leap did not make it to the out-of-the-box public images on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).  However, it is listed in the "Community supported images" category.

PS:  I'm placing my vain hope that Leap 15 will make it though...

This blog entry describes the steps to create a vanilla openSUSE Leap 42.3 VM on GCP and thereafter, create a custom image from this said VM so you can easily/quickly create openSUSE Leap 42.3 VMs for other workloads in the future through the GCP Web Console.

From this point on, I will assume you have a GCP account and therefore access to GCP consoles etc.  It is not difficult to start with Google Cloud Platform, just go to https://cloud.google.com/free/ to get a Free Tier account.

Create an openSUSE Leap 42.3 VM on GCP:

1. Login to your GCP console and your project (default or otherwise).
2. From Menu (top-left),  Compute Engine -> VM instances
3. Note that openSUSE is not listed as an Operating System image when you try to create a new VM.  This is well documented at the Images section of the Compute Engine topic.
   
4. Launch the Cloud Shell within the console, on the top-right.
   
5. Find the available community supported openSUSE Leap image with the following command input to the Cloud Shell. 
• gcloud compute images list --project opensuse-cloud --no-standard-images 
6. Create a VM with the openSUSE Leap 42.3 image in the Singapore datacenter (or any Zones that is closest to you)


•  gcloud compute instances create osleap423 --image-family opensuse-leap --image-project opensuse-cloud --zone asia-southeast1-a
• For Reference, the available parameters for gcloud compute instances create at this link - https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/compute/instances/create
• Verify that the VM has been created in the console 
  
7. SSH into your newly created openSUSE Leap 42.3 VM to download and apply the latest updates/patches.  Click the SSH button (see screenshot above).
• Once you SSH into your VM,  zypper up.
  
  
8. Reboot the VM to test all updates are working.
• Reboot:  sudo reboot.  You will lose SSH connection, naturally.
• Sign back in via SSH button... it may take a few tries as the VM is rebooting.
• Sign out of SSH:  exit
9. Shutdown the VM.  Select the VM (checkbox) from the Console and Click STOP.

Create a custom image in your GCP Project for Re-use later:

1. From the GCP console, navigate to Compute Engine -> Images
2. Click [+] CREATE IMAGE 
   
3. Put in the name of your new image (eg. my-opensuse-leap-423) and select Source as Disk and Source disk as the boot disk from the right VM (eg. osleap423).
   
• (Optional) You can click the command line link at the bottom to note the equivalent Cloud Shell command.  This is useful if you want to script actions for future re-use and not use the web-console.
4. Once your custom image is created, you will be able to select it for the next VM you wish to create.

Enjoy! :-)