GCP Fundamentals

Cloud Shell

Cloud Shell is a browser-based terminal pre-authenticated with your project. It comes with the gcloud SDK, git, and other tools pre-installed.

# Check active account
gcloud auth list
 
# Check current project
gcloud config list project

Regions and zones

A region is a specific geographic location. A zone is an isolated resource within a region.

gcloud config get-value compute/zone
gcloud config get-value compute/region
gcloud compute project-info describe --project <PROJECT_ID>

Environment variables

export PROJECT_ID=<your_project_ID>
export ZONE=<your_zone>
echo $PROJECT_ID
echo $ZONE

Creating a VM

gcloud compute instances create gcelab2 --machine-type n1-standard-2 --zone $ZONE

Key subcommand: gcloud compute instances create <NAME> — creates a new Compute Engine VM.

SSH into the VM

gcloud compute ssh gcelab2 --zone $ZONE

This auto-generates SSH keys on first connection. Disconnect with exit.

gcloud exploration commands

gcloud -h                              # Basic help
gcloud config --help                   # Config-specific help
gcloud config list                     # Current configuration
gcloud config list --all               # All properties
gcloud components list                 # Installed SDK components

Installing the interactive shell

sudo apt-get install google-cloud-sdk
gcloud beta interactive

Interactive mode provides auto-completing prompts with inline help. Exit with exit.