GSP210

Overview

Google Cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) provides networking functionality to Compute Engine virtual machine (VM) instances, Kubernetes Engine containers and App Engine Flex. In other words, without a VPC network you cannot create VM instances, containers or App Engine applications. Therefore, each Google Cloud project has a default network to get you started.

You can think of a VPC network the same way you would think of a physical network, except that it is virtualized within Google Cloud. A VPC network is a global resource which consists of a list of regional virtual subnetworks (subnets) in data centers, all connected by a global wide area network (WAN). VPC networks are logically isolated from each other in Google Cloud.

In this lab, you create an auto mode VPC network with firewall rules and two VM instances. Then, you explore the connectivity for the VM instances.

Objectives

In this lab, you learn how to perform the following tasks:

• Explore the default VPC network
• Create an auto mode network with firewall rules
• Create VM instances using Compute Engine
• Explore the connectivity for VM instances

Setup and requirements

Before you click the Start Lab button

Read these instructions. Labs are timed and you cannot pause them. The timer, which starts when you click Start Lab, shows how long Google Cloud resources are made available to you.

This hands-on lab lets you do the lab activities in a real cloud environment, not in a simulation or demo environment. It does so by giving you new, temporary credentials you use to sign in and access Google Cloud for the duration of the lab.

To complete this lab, you need:

• Access to a standard internet browser (Chrome browser recommended).

Note: Use an Incognito (recommended) or private browser window to run this lab. This prevents conflicts between your personal account and the student account, which may cause extra charges incurred to your personal account.

• Time to complete the lab—remember, once you start, you cannot pause a lab.

Note: Use only the student account for this lab. If you use a different Google Cloud account, you may incur charges to that account.

How to start your lab and sign in to the Google Cloud console

1. Click the Start Lab button. If you need to pay for the lab, a dialog opens for you to select your payment method. On the left is the Lab Details pane with the following:

   • The Open Google Cloud console button
   • Time remaining
   • The temporary credentials that you must use for this lab
   • Other information, if needed, to step through this lab

2. Click Open Google Cloud console (or right-click and select Open Link in Incognito Window if you are running the Chrome browser).

   The lab spins up resources, and then opens another tab that shows the Sign in page.

   Tip: Arrange the tabs in separate windows, side-by-side.

   Note: If you see the Choose an account dialog, click Use Another Account.

3. If necessary, copy the Username below and paste it into the Sign in dialog.

   {{{user_0.username | "Username"}}}

   You can also find the Username in the Lab Details pane.

4. Click Next.

5. Copy the Password below and paste it into the Welcome dialog.

   {{{user_0.password | "Password"}}}

   You can also find the Password in the Lab Details pane.

6. Click Next.

   Important: You must use the credentials the lab provides you. Do not use your Google Cloud account credentials. Note: Using your own Google Cloud account for this lab may incur extra charges.

7. Click through the subsequent pages:

   • Accept the terms and conditions.
   • Do not add recovery options or two-factor authentication (because this is a temporary account).
   • Do not sign up for free trials.

After a few moments, the Google Cloud console opens in this tab.

Note: To access Google Cloud products and services, click the Navigation menu or type the service or product name in the Search field.

Task 1. Explore the default network

Each Google Cloud project has a default network with subnets, routes, and firewall rules.

View the subnets

The default network has a subnet in each Google Cloud region.

1. In the Cloud console, navigate to Navigation menu () > VPC network > VPC networks.

2. Click on the default network. Notice the default network details and the subnets.

Note: Each subnet is associated with a Google Cloud region and a private RFC 1918 CIDR block for its internal IP addresses range and a gateway.

View the routes

Routes tell VM instances and the VPC network how to send traffic from an instance to a destination, either inside the network or outside of Google Cloud.

Each VPC network comes with some default routes to route traffic among its subnets and send traffic from eligible instances to the Internet.

1. In the left pane, click on Routes.

2. In the Effective Routes tab, select the default network and the .

Notice that there is a route for each subnet and one for the Default internet gateway (0.0.0.0./0).

Note: These routes are managed for you but you can create custom static routes to direct some packets to specific destinations. For example, you can create a route that sends all outbound traffic to an instance configured as a NAT gateway.

View the firewall rules

Each VPC network implements a distributed virtual firewall that you can configure. Firewall rules allow you to control which packets are allowed to travel to which destinations.

Every VPC network has two implied firewall rules that block all incoming connections and allow all outgoing connections.

1. In the left pane, click on Firewall.

Notice that there are 4 Ingress firewall rules for the default network:

• default-allow-icmp
• default-allow-internal
• default-allow-rdp
• default-allow-ssh

Note: These firewall rules allow ICMP, RDP and SSH ingress traffic from anywhere (0.0.0.0/0) and all TCP, UDP and ICMP traffic within the network (10.128.0.0/9). The Targets, Source filters, Protocols/ports and Action columns explain these rules.

Delete the default network

1. Select all firewall rules and click DELETE.

2. In the Cloud console, navigate to Navigation menu () > VPC network > VPC networks.

3. Click on the default network.

4. Click Delete VPC network at the top of the page,

5. Then click DELETE to confirm the deletion of the default network.

   Note: Wait for the network to be deleted before moving on.

6. In the left pane, click on Routes.

   Notice that there are no routes. You may need to click the Refresh button at the top of the page.

Note: Without a VPC network, there are no routes!

Try to create a VM instance

Verify that you cannot create a VM instance without a VPC network.

1. In the Cloud console, navigate to Navigation menu () > Compute Engine > VM instances.

2. To create a new instance, click Create Instance.

3. Leave all the values at their default and click Create.

   Note: Notice the error.

4. Click Networking.

5. Go to Network interfaces section.

   Note: Notice the error No network available. Before you can create an instance, first create a network.

6. Click Cancel.

Note: As expected, you cannot create a VM instance without a VPC network!

Task 2. Create a VPC network and VM instances

Create a VPC network so that you can create VM instances.

Create an auto mode VPC network with Firewall rules

Replicate the default network by creating an auto mode network.

1. In the console, navigate to Navigation menu () > VPC network > VPC networks, and then click +CREATE VPC NETWORK.

2. Set the Name to mynetwork.

3. For Subnet creation mode, click Automatic.

   Auto mode networks create subnets in each region automatically.

4. For Firewall rules, check all available rules.

   These are the same standard firewall rules that the default network had.

Note: The deny-all-ingress and allow-all-egress rules are also displayed, but you cannot check or uncheck them as they are implied. These two rules have a lower Priority (higher integers indicate lower priorities) so that the allow ICMP, custom, RDP and SSH rules are considered first.

5. Click CREATE, then wait for mynetwork to be created.

   Notice that a subnet was created for each region.

6. Click on the mynetwork name and record the IP address range for the subnets in and . Refer to these in the next steps.

Note: If you ever delete the default network, you can quickly re-create it by creating an auto mode network as you just did.

Test completed task

Click Check my progress to verify your performed task. If you have completed the task successfully, you are granted an assessment score.

Create a VPC network.

Create a VM instance in

Create a VM instance in the region. Selecting a region and zone determines the subnet and assigns the internal IP address from the subnet's IP address range.

1. In the console, navigate to Navigation menu () > Compute Engine > VM instances,

2. Click Create Instance.

3. In the Machine configuration:

   Set the following values:

   Property	Value (type value or select option as specified)
   Name	mynet-us-vm
   Region
   Zone
   Series	E2
   Machine Type	e2-micro

4. Click Create, then wait for the instance to be created.

5. Verify that the Internal IP was assigned from the IP address range for the subnet in .

Test completed task

Click Check my progress to verify your performed task. If you have completed the task successfully, you are granted an assessment score.

Create a VM instance in .

Create a VM instance in

Create a VM instance in the region.

1. Click Create Instance.

2. In the Machine configuration:

3. Set the following values:

   Property	Value (type value or select option as specified)
   Name	mynet-second-vm
   Region
   Zone
   Series	E2
   Machine Type	e2-micro

4. Click Create, then wait for the instance to be created.

Note: If you receive an error stating that this zone does not have enough resources to fulfill the request, try re-running steps 1-3 with a different zone.

5. Verify that the Internal IP was assigned from the IP address range for the subnet in .

   The Internal IP should be as x.x.x.1 is reserved for the gateway and you have not configured any other instances in that subnet.

Note: The External IP addresses for both VM instances are ephemeral. If an instance is stopped, any ephemeral external IP addresses assigned to the instance are released back into the general Compute Engine pool and become available for use by other projects.

When a stopped instance is started again, a new ephemeral external IP address is assigned to the instance. Alternatively, you can reserve a static external IP address, which assigns the address to your project indefinitely until you explicitly release it.

Test completed task

Click Check my progress to verify your performed task. If you have completed the task successfully, you are granted an assessment score.

Create a VM instance in .

Task 3. Explore the connectivity for VM instances

Explore the connectivity for the VM instances. Specifically, SSH to your VM instances using tcp:22 and ping both the internal and external IP addresses of your VM instances using ICMP. Then, explore the effects of the firewall rules on connectivity by removing the firewall rules one-by-one.

Verify connectivity for the VM instances

The firewall rules that you created with mynetwork allow ingress SSH and ICMP traffic from within mynetwork (internal IP) and outside of that network (external IP).

1. In the console, navigate to Navigation menu () > Compute Engine > VM instances.

   Note the external and internal IP addresses for mynet-second-vm.

2. For mynet-us-vm, click SSH to launch a terminal and connect. You may have to click SSH twice.

   You are able to SSH because of the allow-ssh firewall rule, which allows incoming traffic from anywhere (0.0.0.0/0) for tcp:22.

   Note: The SSH connection works seamlessly because Compute Engine generates an SSH key for you and stores it in one of the following locations:
   • By default, Compute Engine adds the generated key to project or instance metadata.
   • If your account is configured to use OS Login, Compute Engine stores the generated key with your user account.
   Alternatively, you can control access to Linux instances by creating SSH keys and editing public SSH key metadata.

3. To test connectivity to mynet-second-vm's internal IP, run the following command using mynet-second-vm's internal IP:

   ping -c 3 <Enter mynet-second-vm's internal IP here>

   You are able to ping mynet-second-vm's internal IP because of the allow-custom firewall rule.

4. To test connectivity to mynet-second-vm's external IP, run the following command using mynet-second-vm's external IP:

   ping -c 3 <Enter mynet-second-vm's external IP here>

Task 4. Test your understanding

Below are a multiple choice questions to reinforce your understanding of this lab's concepts. Answer them to the best of your abilities.

Note: You were able to SSH to mynet-us-vm and ping mynet-second-vm's internal and external IP address as expected. Alternatively, you could SSH to mynet-second-vm and ping mynet-us-vm's internal and external IP address, which also works.

Task 5. Remove the allow-icmp firewall rules

Remove the allow-icmp firewall rule and try to ping the internal and external IP address of mynet-second-vm.

1. In the console, navigate to Navigation menu () > VPC network > Firewall.

2. Check the mynetwork-allow-icmp rule.

3. Click DELETE.

4. Click DELETE to confirm the deletion.

   Wait for the firewall rule to be deleted.

5. Return to the mynet-us-vm SSH terminal.

6. To test connectivity to mynet-second-vm's internal IP, run the following command using mynet-second-vm's internal IP:

ping -c 3 <Enter mynet-second-vm's internal IP here>

You are able to ping mynet-second-vm's internal IP because of the allow-custom firewall rule.

7. To test connectivity to mynet-second-vm's external IP, run the following command using mynet-second-vm's external IP:

   ping -c 3 <Enter mynet-second-vm's external IP here>

Note: The 100% packet loss indicates that you are unable to ping mynet-second-vm's external IP. This is expected because you deleted the allow-icmp firewall rule!

Task 6. Remove the allow-custom firewall rules

Remove the allow-custom firewall rule and try to ping the internal IP address of mynet-second-vm.

1. In the console, navigate to Navigation menu () > VPC network > Firewall.

2. Check the mynetwork-allow-custom rule and then click DELETE.

3. Click DELETE to confirm the deletion.

   Wait for the firewall rule to be deleted.

4. Return to the mynet-us-vm SSH terminal.

5. To test connectivity to mynet-second-vm's internal IP, run the following command using mynet-second-vm's internal IP:

   ping -c 3 <Enter mynet-second-vm's internal IP here>

Note: The 100% packet loss indicates that you are unable to ping mynet-second-vm's internal IP. This is expected because you deleted the allow-custom firewall rule!

6. Close the SSH terminal:

   exit

Task 7. Remove the allow-ssh firewall rules

Remove the allow-ssh firewall rule and try to SSH to mynet-us-vm.

1. In the console, navigate to Navigation menu () > VPC network > Firewall.

2. Check the mynetwork-allow-ssh rule and then click DELETE.

3. Click DELETE to confirm the deletion.

   Wait for the firewall rule to be deleted.

4. In the console, navigate to Navigation menu () > Compute Engine > VM instances.

5. For mynet-us-vm, click SSH to launch a terminal and connect.

Note: The Connection failed message indicates that you are unable to SSH to mynet-us-vm because you deleted the allow-ssh firewall rule!

Congratulations!

In this lab, you explored the default network along with its subnets, routes, and firewall rules. You deleted the default network and determined that you cannot create any VM instances without a VPC network. Thus, you created a new auto mode VPC network with subnets, routes, firewall rules and two VM instances. Then, you tested the connectivity for the VM instances and explored the effects of the firewall rules on connectivity.

Next steps / learn more

Learn more about Google VPCs by reading Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Network Overview.

Manual last updated March 16, 2025

Lab last tested March 16, 2025

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