Google Cloud Deployment
As one of the most used search engines and owner of applications aimed to showcase the work of others such as YouTube, it seemed inevitable that Google would find a way to branch out its services to developers. This inevitably manifested in the form of the Google Cloud platform that launched in April of 2008. The platform came with a seemingly numerous quantity of helpful and necessary tools and resources to aid developers and to fully utilize these resources it helps to know a little about the cloud service as a whole!
The Google Cloud is defined as a platform as a service (PAAS), this means that Google gives you the environment and tools needed to develop and deploy applications for a fee. Within this platform, you gain access to hardware resources, such as virtual machines, and memory storage, databases, and security through the software resources. These specific services are spread through different types of models similar to the PAAS and are known as infrastructure as a service (IAAS) and software as a service (SAAS). As a testament to this service structure, the infrastructure for both Google Search Engine and YouTube are hosted on the Google Cloud.
Diving into a specific service offered by the cloud is the Deployment Manager. The Deployment Manager is offered as an IAAS. This resource makes use of the Google command line in order to deploy applications. Before this, however, some specific necessities are needed. The Deployment Manager — DM henceforth — relies on two specific types of files in order to deploy, a configuration file written in YAML and a template file written in either Jinja or Python.
The YAML file is the main component needed for deployment and is basically just a file that shows the structure and displays the resources and properties that will be used in the application. This also houses the imported forms of the template files which are just additional add ons for config files that are too large. The config files are meant to be human-readable and so that a person can clearly access the necessary materials. The template files are imported through the use of the template variables.
Once the files are all set up and ready to go, it is time to deploy through the command line. The steps to deploy are quite straightforward as according to the documentation and once you finally deploy, you are done and are able to maintain the status of the application through the cloud.
