--- title: "Deploy a Web Server to Google Compute Engine" description: "In this tutorial, you'll use JavaScript to deploy a simple web server virtual machine instance to Google Compute Engine. You'll define a network, a firewall, and an instance, deploy them with `pulumi up`, and then update the program to expose port 80 and serve a page from a startup script. Along the way you'll see how Pulumi decides which changes it can make in place and which require replacing a resource." url: "https://www.pulumi.com/dev/tutorials/gce-webserver/" image: "https://www.pulumi.com/assets/og/dev/tutorials/gce-webserver.png" --- # Deploy a Web Server to Google Compute Engine In this tutorial, you'll use JavaScript to deploy a simple web server virtual machine instance to Google Compute Engine. You'll define a network, a firewall, and an instance, deploy them with `pulumi up`, and then update the program to expose port 80 and serve a page from a startup script. Along the way you'll see how Pulumi decides which changes it can make in place and which require replacing a resource. ## What you'll learn - How to define a GCE network, firewall, and instance in a Pulumi program - How to preview and deploy your infrastructure with pulumi up - How to export and read stack outputs like an instance's IP address - How Pulumi computes in-place updates versus resource replacements ## Prerequisites - The [Pulumi CLI](https://www.pulumi.com/docs/install/) - A [Pulumi Cloud account](https://app.pulumi.com/signup) and an [access token](https://www.pulumi.com/docs/administration/access-identity/access-tokens/) - A [Google Cloud account](https://cloud.google.com/cloud-console) with a project you can create virtual machines in - The [Google Cloud CLI](https://cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/install) (`gcloud`), configured with credentials - [Node.js](https://nodejs.org/) In this tutorial, we'll use JavaScript to deploy a simple web server virtual machine instance to Google Compute Engine. The [code for this tutorial](https://github.com/pulumi/examples/tree/master/gcp-js-webserver) is available on GitHub. ## Create a virtual machine with SSH access 1. In a new folder `webserver`, create an empty project with `pulumi new`. Choose a Google Cloud `project` you have access to create virtual machines within. ```bash $ mkdir webserver && cd webserver $ pulumi new gcp-javascript ... gcp:project: The Google Cloud project to deploy into: ``` 2. Open `index.js` and replace the contents with the following: ```javascript const gcp = require("@pulumi/gcp"); // Create a network const network = new gcp.compute.Network("network"); const computeFirewall = new gcp.compute.Firewall("firewall", { network: network.id, allows: [{ protocol: "tcp", ports: [ "22" ], }], }); // Create a Virtual Machine Instance const computeInstance = new gcp.compute.Instance("instance", { machineType: "f1-micro", zone: "us-central1-a", bootDisk: { initializeParams: { image: "debian-cloud/debian-9" } }, networkInterfaces: [{ network: network.id, // accessConfigs must include a single empty config to request an ephemeral IP accessConfigs: [{}], }], }); // Export the name and IP address of the Instance exports.instanceName = computeInstance.name; exports.instanceIP = computeInstance.networkInterfaces.apply(ni => ni[0].accessConfigs[0].natIp); ``` This example uses the [@pulumi/gcp](https://www.pulumi.com/registry/packages/gcp) package to create and manage three Google Cloud resources: a [gcp.compute.Network](https://www.pulumi.com/registry/packages/gcp/api-docs/compute/network/) in which the virtual machine will run, a [gcp.compute.Firewall](https://www.pulumi.com/registry/packages/gcp/api-docs/compute/firewall/) which allows access for incoming SSH access, and a [gcp.compute.Instance](https://www.pulumi.com/registry/packages/gcp/api-docs/compute/instance/) which is created inside the network from the Debian 9 base image. 3. To preview and deploy changes, run `pulumi up`. The command shows a preview of the resources that will be created and prompts on whether to proceed with the deployment. Note that the stack itself is counted as a resource, though it does not correspond to a physical cloud resource. $ pulumi up Previewing update (webservergcp-dev): Type Name Plan pulumi:pulumi:Stack webservergcp-webservergcp-dev + ├─ gcp:compute:Network network create + ├─ gcp:compute:Firewall firewall create + └─ gcp:compute:Instance instance create Resources: + 3 to create 1 unchanged 4. Now, proceed with the deployment, which will take around a minute to complete. Do you want to perform this update? yes Updating (webservergcp-dev): Type Name Status pulumi:pulumi:Stack webservergcp-webservergcp-dev + ├─ gcp:compute:Network network created + ├─ gcp:compute:Instance instance created + └─ gcp:compute:Firewall firewall created Outputs: + instanceIP : "173.255.117.131" + instanceName: "instance-bf0ab1f" Resources: + 3 created 1 unchanged Duration: 1m20s Permalink: https://app.pulumi.com/lukehoban/webservergcp-dev/updates/1 To see the full details of the deployment and the resources that are now part of the stack, open the update permalink in a browser. 5. To view the provisioned resources on the command line, run `pulumi stack`. You'll also see two [stack outputs](https://www.pulumi.com/docs/concepts/stack#output) corresponding to the IP and full-qualified host name of the virtual machine instance we've created. ``` $ pulumi stack ... Current stack resources (5): TYPE NAME pulumi:pulumi:Stack webservergcp-webservergcp-dev pulumi:providers:gcp default gcp:compute/network:Network network gcp:compute/firewall:Firewall firewall gcp:compute/instance:Instance instance Current stack outputs (2): OUTPUT VALUE instanceIP 173.255.117.131 instanceName instance-bf0ab1f ``` ## Updating the Pulumi program Now that we have an instance of our Pulumi program deployed, we may want to make changes. We do this by updating our Pulumi program to define the new state we want our infrastructure to be in, then and running `pulumi up` to commit the changes. 1. Replace the creation of the two firewall and instance with the following. This exposes an additional port and adds a startup script to run a simple HTTP server at startup. ```javascript ... const computeFirewall = new gcp.compute.Firewall("firewall", { network: computeNetwork.id, allows: [{ protocol: "tcp", ports: [ "22", "80" ], // <-- ADD "80" HERE }], }); // v-- ADD THIS DEFINITION const startupScript = `#!/bin/bash echo "Hello, World!" > index.html nohup python -m SimpleHTTPServer 80 &`; const computeInstance = new gcp.compute.Instance("instance", { machineType: "f1-micro", zone: "us-central1-a", metadataStartupScript: startupScript, // <-- ADD THIS LINE bootDisk: { initializeParams: { image: "debian-cloud/debian-9" } }, networkInterfaces: [{ network: network.id, // accessConfigus must include a single empty config to request an ephemeral IP accessConfigs: [{}], }], }); ... ``` > **Note** > > Note that we defined the `metadataStartupScript` script inline in a string. Because we are using JavaScript, we could also read this from a file, construct this string programmatically, or even build up a string that depends on other resources defined in our program. We'll see in later sections how we can deploy and version the application code of our program in a variety of different ways using Pulumi. 2. Run `pulumi up` to preview and deploy the changes. You'll see two changes: the `allows` property of the `Firewall` will be _updated_ in-place. Second, the `Instance` will be _replaced_ with a new virtual machine Instance which will run the new script on startup. Pulumi understands which changes to a given cloud resource can be made in-place, and which require replacement, and computes the minimally disruptive change to achieve the desired state. ```bash $ pulumi up Previewing update (webservergcp-dev): ... Updating (webservergcp-dev): Type Name Status Info pulumi:pulumi:Stack webservergcp-webservergcp-dev ~ ├─ gcp:compute:Firewall firewall updated [diff: ~allows] +- └─ gcp:compute:Instance instance replaced [diff: +metadataStartupScript~name] Outputs: ~ instanceIP : "173.255.117.131" => "35.202.30.129" ~ instanceName: "instance-bf0ab1f" => "instance-31bbd12" Resources: ~ 1 updated +-1 replaced 2 changes. 2 unchanged Duration: 2m41s Permalink: https://app.pulumi.com/lukehoban/webservergcp-dev/updates/2 ``` 3. We can use `pulumi stack output` to get the value of stack outputs from the CLI. So we can `curl` the virtual machine instance to see the HTTP server running there. Stack outputs can also be viewed on the Pulumi Cloud. ```bash $ curl $(pulumi stack output instanceIP) Hello, World! ``` ## Clean up Before moving on, let's tear down the resources that are part of our stack. 1. Run `pulumi destroy` to tear down all resources. You'll be prompted to make sure you really want to delete these resources. This takes about 60 seconds; Pulumi waits for the virtual machine instance to shutdown and for the compute network to be removed before it considers the destroy operation to be complete. 2. To delete the stack itself, run `pulumi stack rm`. Note that this command deletes all deployment history from the Pulumi Cloud. ## Summary In this tutorial, we saw how to use Pulumi programs to create and manage cloud resources in Google Cloud, using regular JavaScript and NPM packages. To preview and update infrastructure, use `pulumi up`. To clean up resources, run `pulumi destroy`. For a similar example in other languages and clouds, see the [Web Server examples collection](https://github.com/pulumi/examples#web-server).