Google Cloud Platform

You must have an account with Google Cloud, so that you can create and manage virtual machine instances.

1 Download the image file from General LIMS. Log in to General LIMS service; click General LIMS VM image, and click Download under Google Cloud Platform.

2 Log in to Google Cloud console, click Storage accounts under portal menu. Select the account or create an account if you don't have one.

3 Click the console menu, go to Cloud Storage -> Buckets, then click CREATE to create the bucket, where you can save the files.

4 Continue with step 3, click UPLOAD FILES, upload the file you just downloaded from General LIMS.

5 Activate Cloud Shell to use the command line to create virtual machine image. Type the following command, this will create a virtual machine image from the .tar.gz file

gcloud compute images create image-name --source-uri=source-uri

Optionally, you can achieve this via Google Cloud console. Click CREATE IMAGE, then choose Cloud Storage file as Source. Browse the Storage Bucket to select the storage file.

6 Create General LIMS server instance from the virtual machine image. Click CREATE INSTANCE, then choose the option New VM instance. Then specify the instance name and other settings. You will need change the boot disk by clicking Change, then select CUSTOM IMAGES and choose the image you just created. Continue configure the other settings, specify the Fire Wall rules and allow the HTTP and HTTPS traffic. Review all the settings, click CREATE. It will take a while for the new instance to be up and running.

7 Add data disk to the instance. Click the instance name, then click Edit, you will be able to configure the settings. Click ADD NEW DISK, then specify the parameters to create a new disk. In the end, apply the settings by clicking SAVE.

8 Start the instance. Get the IP address of the virtual machine and use the browser to access the system to start the initialization.