Understanding Service Accounts on Google Compute Engine

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Understanding Service Accounts on Google Compute Engine

In this lab, we create a custom service account with granular IAM permissions, then use the service account when creating a Compute Engine instance that will run the WordPress blogging software connected to a Cloud SQL database.

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Lab Info

Level

Beginner

Last updated

Apr 06, 2025

Duration

30m

Challenge

Create a Cloud SQL Instance
1. Create a new Cloud SQL MySQL instance with the name wordpress-db.
2. Generate a root password and note it for later.
3. Make sure you have the Region set as us-central1 and the Zone as Any.
4. Under Connectivity, tick Private IP.
5. Enable Service Networking API.
6. Under Associated networking, select the default Network.
7. Choose to use an automatically allocated IP range.
8. Untick Public IP to remove public IP connections from this instance.
9. Change the machine type to Shared Core, 1 vCPU, 1.7 GB..
Challenge

Create a Custom Service Account
1. Create a new service account named wordpress-app.
2. When prompted to Grant this service account access to project, type SQL in the Select a role box to search roles, then select Cloud SQL Client.
Challenge

Create the WordPress Instance on Compute Engine
1. Create a new instance named wordpress.
2. Set the Region to us-central1 (the console will choose a zone for you).
3. Change the Machine type to e2-small.
4. Have the instance deploy a container to the VM instance, and use the container wordpress.
5. For our service account, make sure to select wordpress-app.
6. Allow all HTTP traffic on the instance.
7. Use the VM's External IP link to see the WordPress language selection screen.
Challenge

Set Up WordPress and the Database
Before we configure WordPress, we must first create the database inside our new Cloud SQL instance.
1. Take note of the private IP for our wordpress-db instance.
2. Create a new database with the name wordpress.
Complete the rest of these steps in WordPress:
1. Choose your preferred language, then on the next screen click Let's go!.
2. Update the connection details to match the following:
  
  Database name: wordpress
  
  Username: root
  
  Password: The root password you noted earlier.
  
  Database Host: The private IP you noted earlier.
  
  Table Prefix: wp_
3. Run the installation.

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