--- title: Running Kontena in the Google Cloud description: In this blog post we'll set up Kontena on top of CoreOS on GCE. In the previous blog, I described Kontena's architecture. We'll use the authentication service hosted by kontena. To register an account, we need to install the command line interface. image: http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/2668666/All-InOne-2016/Image/bg-img.jpg --- Check out our **[Cloud Native Services](https://www.container-solutions.com/services) **and** **book a call with one of our experts today!  [![Container Solutions](https://blog.container-solutions.com/hubfs/CS_blog/logo-main.svg "Container Solutions")](http://container-solutions.com) - share: - [**](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.container-solutions.com%2Frunning-kontena-google-cloud) - [**](https://www.twitter.com/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.container-solutions.com%2Frunning-kontena-google-cloud) - [**](http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://blog.container-solutions.com/running-kontena-google-cloud) - [**](https://blog.container-solutions.com/running-kontena-google-cloud#) [![](http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/2668666/All-InOne-2016/Image/bg-img.jpg) ](https://blog.container-solutions.com/running-kontena-google-cloud) [Miscellaneous](https://blog.container-solutions.com/tag/miscellaneous) # Running Kontena in the Google Cloud [Maarten Hoogendoorn](https://blog.container-solutions.com/author/maarten-hoogendoorn) ![Maarten Hoogendoorn](https://blog.container-solutions.com/hubfs/CS--Dev__Assets/asset%2011.jpeg) October 19, 2016 6 minutes Read In this blog post we'll set up Kontena on top of CoreOS on GCE. In the [previous blog](https://container-solutions.com/kontena-alternative-container-orchestrator), I described Kontena's architecture. ### Register an account We'll use the authentication service hosted by kontena. To register an account, we need to install the command line interface. It's packaged at the moment as a ruby gem, so make sure that ruby is installed. I personally use this trick to install gems local to a project directory: ``` cat env.sh (out) export GEM_HOME=`pwd`/.gems (out) export PATH=$PATH:`pwd`/.gems/bin source env.sh # evaluate the exports in the current shell ``` And install the cli, and register an account. Follow the instructions provided by the client. ``` gem install kontena-cli kontena register ``` ### Setting up the GCE instances. We'll adapt the instructions on how to set up a [CoreOS cluster](https://kontena.io/docs/getting-started/installing/coreos). I recommend to browse through them as well, to get a feeling of what we're about to do. ### Setup of the Kontena Master 1. Create a `master.yml` file with the cloud config content described on the CoreOS cluster page. 2. Follow the instructions to create random values for `KONTENA_VAULT_KEY` and `KONTENA_VAULT_IV` with the provided command `cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 64 | head -n 1`. Put them in the `master.yml` file. 3. Now we should add a SSL certificate to encrypt the http traffic. If you're going to deploy something else than an experiment, I strongly recomment to get a domain name, and get a valid certificate. A [Let's Encrypt](https://letsencrypt.org/) certificate will do. We'll create a self signed certificate for now, because we will not be using a domain name. ``` openssl genrsa -out private.key 2048 openssl req -new -key private.key -out public.csr -subj "/CN=kontena-master/" openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in public.csr -signkey private.key -out public.crt cat public.crt private.key > kontena-master.pem cat kontena-master.pem ``` Copy the content of `kontena-master.pem` in the master.yml file. Mind the indentation! 4. Now we'll create the master server. I picked the instructions on how to create a CoreOS stable instance from the [CoreOS documentation](https://coreos.com/os/docs/latest/booting-on-google-compute-engine.html). ``` gcloud compute instances create kontena-master \ (out) --image https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/coreos-cloud/global/images/coreos-stable-1122-2-0-v20160906 \ (out) --zone europe-west1-b \ (out) --machine-type n1-standard-1 \ (out) --metadata-from-file user-data=master.yml \ (out) --tags=http-server,https-server ``` Find the external IP address of the master in the output from gcloud, and put it in an environmental variable. ``` export KONTENA_MASTER_IP=aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd ``` 5. As the last step of setting up the master, we'll log in to it. Note that we have to ignore the validity of our self-signed certificate. This is not how things should be done, but will get a fast result for a quick evaluation. ``` SSL_IGNORE_ERRORS=true kontena login --name kontena-master-gce https://$KONTENA_MASTER_IP ``` ### Creating a grid, and adding nodes to it. 1. We'll create a grid, a logical grouping of nodes, first. ``` SSL_IGNORE_ERRORS=true kontena grid create testgrid ``` 2. The next step is to generate a generic cloud-config.yml for the nodes: ``` SSL_IGNORE_ERRORS=true kontena grid cloud-config testgrid > grid_node.yml ``` 3. We finish with creating the nodes themselves using the gcloud tool: ``` gcloud compute instances create \ (out) kontena-testgrid-node1 \ (out) --image https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/coreos-cloud/global/images/coreos-stable-1122-2-0-v20160906 \ (out) --zone europe-west1-b \ (out) --machine-type n1-standard-1 \ (out) --metadata-from-file user-data=grid_node.yml \ (out) --tags=http-server,https-server (out) gcloud compute instances create \ (out) kontena-testgrid-node2 \ (out) --image https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/coreos-cloud/global/images/coreos-stable-1122-2-0-v20160906 \ (out) --zone europe-west1-b \ (out) --machine-type n1-standard-1 \ (out) --metadata-from-file user-data=grid_node.yml \ (out) --tags=http-server,https-server gcloud compute instances create \ (out) kontena-testgrid-node3 \ (out) --image https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/coreos-cloud/global/images/coreos-stable-1122-2-0-v20160906 \ (out) --zone europe-west1-b \ (out) --machine-type n1-standard-1 \ (out) --metadata-from-file user-data=grid_node.yml \ (out) --tags=http-server,https-server ``` nten Take a look at some of the provided [example applications](https://github.com/kontena/examples) on GitHub. Clone the repo, go to one of the directories containing a `kontena.yml` file, and run `kontena app deploy` to deploy that application. [### Kontena: an alternative container orchestrator ](https://blog.container-solutions.com/kontena-alternative-container-orchestrator) [![prev-arrow](https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/3842749/Wow%202019/Images/left-arrow.png) Previous article](https://blog.container-solutions.com/kontena-alternative-container-orchestrator) [ Next article ![next-arrow](https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/3842749/Wow%202019/Images/right-arrow.png) ](https://blog.container-solutions.com/continuous-integration-deployment-micro-services-different-platforms) [ ### Continuous Integration of deployment of micro-services to di... ](https://blog.container-solutions.com/continuous-integration-deployment-micro-services-different-platforms) Comments Leave your Comment ![cs-logo-white](https://blog.container-solutions.com/hs-fs/hubfs/cs-logo-white.png?width=150&height=61&name=cs-logo-white.png "cs-logo-white") #### **Talk to sales** [info@container-solutions.com](mailto:info@container-Solutions.com) #### Stay In Touch - [**](https://www.linkedin.com/company/container-solutions/) - [**](https://twitter.com/containersoluti) © 2024 Container Solutions