The full deployment life cycle of an application on Google Compute Engine

Now that we understand the fundamental concepts and characteristics of a VM created using GCE, we can review how to deploy an application together with the components needed to consume its services.

Installing an application in a virtual machine

To install an application in a VM, simply connect remotely via SSH or Windows Remote Desktop to the VM and carry out the installation as you would do in a local environment. This procedure is called application deployment in a simple instance.

But what happens when you want to perform an installation in a group of self-managed VMs that have the possibility of scaling horizontally using scale out (creating new instances) or scale in (eliminating previously created instances)? In this case, our installation strategy of connecting to the particular instance is not feasible. Instead, it is necessary to run an automated installation script, create an instance template...