Google Cloud Create Regional Persistent Disk for VM

Step-01: Introduction¶

Understand importance of Regional persistence disks
Create a Regional Persistence Disk
Associate it with two Virtual Machines in Read-Only Mode.

Step-02: Create Regional Persistent Disk¶

Go to Compute Engine -> Storage -> Disks -> Create Disk
Name: regional-disk1
Description: regional-disk1
Location: Regional
Region: us-central1 (Iowa)
Zone: us-central1-a
Replica Zone: us-central1-b
Disk source type: Blank disk
Disk settings:
Disk type: Balanced Persistent Disk
Click on COMPARE DISK TYPES - UNDERSTAND ABOUT VARIOUS DISK OPTIONS
Size: 200
Snapshot schedule (Recommended): leave empty (leave to defaults)
Encryption: Google managed encryption
ADD LABEL: environment=dev

Click on CREATE

# Create Regional Persistent Disk
gcloud compute disks create regional-disk2 \
    --project=gcplearn9 \
    --type=pd-balanced \
    --description=regional-disk2 \
    --size=200GB \
    --region=us-central1 \
    --replica-zones=projects/gcplearn9/zones/us-central1-a,projects/gcplearn9/zones/us-central1-f

Step-03: Review newly created Regional Disk properties¶

Go to Compute Engine -> Storage -> Disks -> regional-disk1 -> Click on it
Review Properties
Primarily review the Zones property

Step-04: Create VM Instances¶

# Create VM Instance: VM1
gcloud compute instances create vm1 \
  --zone=us-central1-a \
  --machine-type=e2-micro \
  --network-interface=subnet=default 

# Create VM Instance: VM2
gcloud compute instances create vm2 \
  --zone=us-central1-a \
  --machine-type=e2-micro \
  --network-interface=subnet=default

Step-05: Associate Regional Disk to VM1¶

Go to Compute Engine -> VM Instances -> vm1 -> Edit
Additional disks
Click Attach existing disk
Disk: regional-disk1
Mode: Read-Only
Deletion rule: Keep Disk
Device name: Based on disk name (default)
Click on Done
Click on SAVE

Step-06: Associate Regional Disk to VM2¶

Go to Compute Engine -> VM Instances -> vm2 -> Edit
Additional disks
Click Attach existing disk
Disk: regional-disk1
Mode: Read-Only
Deletion rule: Keep Disk
Device name: Based on disk name (default)
Click on Done
Click on SAVE
KEY OBSERVATION: Review the error message for Read-Write when associating to second instance.

Step-07: Clean-Up¶

# Delete VM Instances
gcloud compute instances delete vm1 --zone us-central1-a
gcloud compute instances delete vm2 --zone us-central1-a

# Delete Regional Persistent Disk
gcloud compute disks delete regional-disk1 --region us-central1
gcloud compute disks delete regional-disk2 --region us-central1

Additional Reference¶

https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/disks/regional-persistent-disk