Create Google Cloud instance with custom ISO

Question

I want to create a new Google Cloud Compute Engine instance with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. I tried doing it with the inbuilt image and tried to set up an Ubuntu desktop with VNC. I did end up getting everything to work but felt it was too much of a hassle to install a desktop environment and set up a VNC service.

So I was wondering how I could upload a desktop Ubuntu ISO to Google Cloud and using that as the starting image for a Google Cloud Compute Engine instance.

Solution

In order to create custom images there are two possible way:

• You can create custom images of boot disks and use these images to create new instances. This is ideal for situations where you have created and modified a persistent boot disk to a certain state and need to save that state to create new instances.

• Alternatively, you can import boot disk images to Compute Engine from your existing systems and add them to your custom images list.

There is a whole section of the Google Documentation "How-to" regarding the creation of Custom images that I advise you to follow.

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In particular I believe you are interested how to import a Boot Disk to Compute engine.

Shortly the steps are the following:

1. Plan your import path. You must identify where you are going to prepare your boot disk image before you upload it, and how you are going to connect to that image after it boots in the Compute Engine environment.

2. Prepare your boot disk so it can boot within the Compute Engine environment and so you can access it after it boots.

3. Create and compress the boot disk image file.

4. Upload the image file to Google Cloud Storage and import the image to Compute Engine as a new custom image.

5. Use the imported image to create a virtual machine instance and make sure it boots properly.

6. If the image does not successfully boot, you can troubleshoot the issue by attaching the boot disk image to another instance and reconfiguring it.

7. Optimise the image and install the Linux Guest Environment so that your imported operating system image can communicate with the metadata server and use additional Compute Engine features.