bastion host

Bastion Host

CloudShell: Create Bastion VM

CloudShell is an interactive option not suitable for long-running operations. It will time-out in 20 minutes losing your session settings in process. Apigee hybrid provisioning is a long-running process, it makes sense to provision a bastion VM. Bastion VM is also useful for troubleshooting, at it would be able to access private network addresses of your project.

We are going to:

• create a Service Account;
• add granular roles to it;
• provision a VM with scope and service account that will allow execute the provisioning script successfully;
• invoke SSH session at the VM.

1. In the GCP Console, activate Cloud Shell

2. Define PROJECT variable. Click at the Authorize button when asked.

NOTE: For QwikLabs, you can use the following command and skip the step:

export PROJECT=$(gcloud projects list --filter='project_id~qwiklabs-gcp' --format=value'(project_id)')
echo $PROJECT

export PROJECT=<your-project-id>

gcloud config set project $PROJECT

1. Create a service account for installation purposes. Click at the Authorize button when asked.

export INSTALLER_SA_ID=installer-sa

gcloud iam service-accounts create $INSTALLER_SA_ID

1. Add IAM policy bindings with required roles

The following snippet contains list of role required to successfully install cluster; ASM; and Hybrid. The purpose is to explicitly grant required roles only.

WARNING: For a false feeling of simplicity you might be templed to bind SA to a project owner role: roles='roles/owner'. It still is marginally better than using your credentials on a shared VM.

TIP: Useful links:

https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/understanding-roles

https://cloud.google.com/service-mesh/docs/installation-permissions

roles/compute.securityAdmin -- create firewall

roles='roles/compute.networkAdmin
       roles/compute.viewer
       roles/compute.securityAdmin
       roles/iam.securityAdmin
       roles/container.admin
       roles/resourcemanager.projectIamAdmin

       roles/apigee.admin

       roles/iam.serviceAccountAdmin
       roles/iam.serviceAccountKeyAdmin
       roles/iam.serviceAccountUser
       roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin
       roles/servicemanagement.admin
       roles/gkehub.admin
       roles/meshconfig.admin
       roles/privateca.admin'

for r in $roles; do
    gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding $PROJECT \
        --member=serviceAccount:$INSTALLER_SA_ID@$PROJECT.iam.gserviceaccount.com \
        --role=$r
done

1. Configure some provisioning parameters of the bastion host as appropriate

export BASTION_NETWORK=default
export BASTION_SUBNET=default
export BASTION_ZONE=europe-west1-b
export BASTION_MACHINE_TYPE=e2-standard-2        # frugal option: f1-micro

1. Create a compute instance with installer SA identity that will be used to execute script.

gcloud compute instances create bastion \
    --network $BASTION_NETWORK \
    --subnet $BASTION_SUBNET \
    --zone=$BASTION_ZONE \
    --machine-type=$BASTION_MACHINE_TYPE \
    --service-account $INSTALLER_SA_ID@$PROJECT.iam.gserviceaccount.com \
    --scopes cloud-platform

Bastion Host: Install Prerequisites

1. In GCP Console, open Compute Engine/VM instances page, using hamburger menu.

2. The for bastion host, click SSH button to open an SSH session.

3. Execute following apt command to make sure required utilities are installed

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install -y mc dnsutils git jq kubectl
sudo apt install -y google-cloud-sdk-gke-gcloud-auth-plugin # gke-gcloud-auth-plugin --version

1. Turn on kubectl plugin called “gke-gcloud-auth-plugin [until v1.25 version]

See for details: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/containers-kubernetes/kubectl-auth-changes-in-gke

echo 'export USE_GKE_GCLOUD_AUTH_PLUGIN=true' >> ~/.bashrc

1. You might not have bash completion package installed. If that's the case, you will see an error when trying to auto-complete custom completions: # for: bash: _get_comp_words_by_ref: command not found

To install it, execute

sudo apt -y install bash-completion

source ~/.profile # to 'fix' a current session