As I walked into the clouds
It took not so long ago in order to deploy a service for testing to get at their disposal a virtual machine in the cloud. Preferably free. For a long time.
I got a lot of resources, including Habr. And I did not find a detailed review of "what, how much, or how much." So the idea was born of writing this article on the results of an independent search. Many cloud computing providers provide free “probes” for a specific period. Looking for information bit by bit in search results, I found and tested several of the providers.
The article will discuss how to get at your disposal a virtual machine (or several) from such providers as Google, Microsoft, HP and in the future others. There will also be a small comparison.
Possessing a level of paranoia above average, I did not want to enter the data of my real bank card on any sites. And most (no, that is, ALL) providers require them before they let them try their services. As a result, I decided to use a virtual card of one well-known payment system for these purposes - and it worked out, well, almost. So let's go.
Started with Microsoft Azure. When I first went to live.com, I registered my outlook.com mailbox. Funny thing: registration is gentle and unobtrusive, but after trying to send any email you are asked to confirm your account via SMS, thus linking your mobile phone. Well, the practice is well known. I have already prepared a mobile phone specifically for such purposes:
So, the live.com account has been received. Go to account.microsoftazure.com and click on Get Free Trial.
Registration involves 4 points, each of which is a mini quest. Our task is for everyone to be marked with a green checkmark Complete. Enter information about yourself. Then we proceed to verify the phone (what to do, it is not enough for them that the phone is already tied when registering mail).
After successfully entering the SMS code opposite to point two, the treasured complete appears and the form for entering card data opens. We introduce.
Click on Sign up and get complete, after which we are asked to wait:
After some waiting, the site asks to log in again and finally the treasured instance management console opens:
Creating instances (i.e. virtual machines) is intuitive. You can choose an image for deployment from those that Microsoft specialists have carefully prepared for us. And then click Create a virtual machine.
We wait, wait and wait again until the image unfolds - and voila! We can go to it on rdp.
The only BUT, if you, like me, a supporter of old versions of Windows - will have to suffer a little. Because on the instance for RDP sessions, the Network Level Authentication check is enabled by default, and without fail. This means that if you have a client of older versions (even WinXP SP3), then you will not be able to connect, the server will simply give an error. Personally, I got out of this situation by temporarily using the RDP client with Win7 available to me. Then reconfigured the instance so that NLA verification is not required.
After that, you can do whatever you want with the instance! Legitimate, of course. At your disposal $ 300 for expenses and a month for tests. Well, then - pay (or go through the whole quest with fake registration for a new one).
We go to cloud.google.com. Click Free Trial and get to the registration page.
Where we kindly enter our data:
After which we are immediately allowed to create instances.
We drive in the name, zone of the virtual machine (I chose closer: europe-west1-b). Well, the type of machine, for my modest needs, I have more than n1-standard and do not need it.
But then you need to decide with which image the virtual machine will be created. I wanted to see how the Windows server will work on Google. Only server-2008-r2 is available. He chose it.
Then drive username, password admin account. And move on to the treasured Networking.
Here we are offered a static IP, white, fluffy, which is accessible from everywhere. And it’s very cool. But if you untie it from a specific instance and it will simply be assigned to your account, they will take a small bribe for it. Yes and not so important, Google gives us as much as $ 300 and as many as 60 days to try.
After clicking on the Create button and some waiting, our machine is available for RDP connection, and there are no such difficulties as in MS with NLA - we can connect from everywhere and without problems.
Problems arose later. When I deployed my project (vpn) inside the instance, the remote machines, for reasons unknown to me, could not even go to each other via ssh, pings were skipped, but otherwise the network froze. He experimented with the settings of the Google’s virtual network adapter, where he is called Red Hat Networking. But he did not succeed. As a result, everything was decided by switching to the Unix instance of the virtual machine from Google. In this case, a similar problem did not arise with the cloud service from Microsoft, their Windows worked like clockwork.
The plus of Google is that for all 60 days I don’t remember a single reboot. That is, uptime is chic. Microsoft had 30 days at least once when it was necessary to reconfigure everything.
In general, in summary, I can say that the cloud-free (trial) hosting of your services, for testing purposes, of course, has the right to life! And to feel how it really works was pleasant and useful.
I got a lot of resources, including Habr. And I did not find a detailed review of "what, how much, or how much." So the idea was born of writing this article on the results of an independent search. Many cloud computing providers provide free “probes” for a specific period. Looking for information bit by bit in search results, I found and tested several of the providers.
The article will discuss how to get at your disposal a virtual machine (or several) from such providers as Google, Microsoft, HP and in the future others. There will also be a small comparison.
Possessing a level of paranoia above average, I did not want to enter the data of my real bank card on any sites. And most (no, that is, ALL) providers require them before they let them try their services. As a result, I decided to use a virtual card of one well-known payment system for these purposes - and it worked out, well, almost. So let's go.
1) Microsoft
Started with Microsoft Azure. When I first went to live.com, I registered my outlook.com mailbox. Funny thing: registration is gentle and unobtrusive, but after trying to send any email you are asked to confirm your account via SMS, thus linking your mobile phone. Well, the practice is well known. I have already prepared a mobile phone specifically for such purposes:
So, the live.com account has been received. Go to account.microsoftazure.com and click on Get Free Trial.
Registration involves 4 points, each of which is a mini quest. Our task is for everyone to be marked with a green checkmark Complete. Enter information about yourself. Then we proceed to verify the phone (what to do, it is not enough for them that the phone is already tied when registering mail).
After successfully entering the SMS code opposite to point two, the treasured complete appears and the form for entering card data opens. We introduce.
Click on Sign up and get complete, after which we are asked to wait:
After some waiting, the site asks to log in again and finally the treasured instance management console opens:
Creating instances (i.e. virtual machines) is intuitive. You can choose an image for deployment from those that Microsoft specialists have carefully prepared for us. And then click Create a virtual machine.
We wait, wait and wait again until the image unfolds - and voila! We can go to it on rdp.
The only BUT, if you, like me, a supporter of old versions of Windows - will have to suffer a little. Because on the instance for RDP sessions, the Network Level Authentication check is enabled by default, and without fail. This means that if you have a client of older versions (even WinXP SP3), then you will not be able to connect, the server will simply give an error. Personally, I got out of this situation by temporarily using the RDP client with Win7 available to me. Then reconfigured the instance so that NLA verification is not required.
After that, you can do whatever you want with the instance! Legitimate, of course. At your disposal $ 300 for expenses and a month for tests. Well, then - pay (or go through the whole quest with fake registration for a new one).
2) Google cloud
We go to cloud.google.com. Click Free Trial and get to the registration page.
Where we kindly enter our data:
After which we are immediately allowed to create instances.
We drive in the name, zone of the virtual machine (I chose closer: europe-west1-b). Well, the type of machine, for my modest needs, I have more than n1-standard and do not need it.
But then you need to decide with which image the virtual machine will be created. I wanted to see how the Windows server will work on Google. Only server-2008-r2 is available. He chose it.
Then drive username, password admin account. And move on to the treasured Networking.
Here we are offered a static IP, white, fluffy, which is accessible from everywhere. And it’s very cool. But if you untie it from a specific instance and it will simply be assigned to your account, they will take a small bribe for it. Yes and not so important, Google gives us as much as $ 300 and as many as 60 days to try.
After clicking on the Create button and some waiting, our machine is available for RDP connection, and there are no such difficulties as in MS with NLA - we can connect from everywhere and without problems.
Problems arose later. When I deployed my project (vpn) inside the instance, the remote machines, for reasons unknown to me, could not even go to each other via ssh, pings were skipped, but otherwise the network froze. He experimented with the settings of the Google’s virtual network adapter, where he is called Red Hat Networking. But he did not succeed. As a result, everything was decided by switching to the Unix instance of the virtual machine from Google. In this case, a similar problem did not arise with the cloud service from Microsoft, their Windows worked like clockwork.
The plus of Google is that for all 60 days I don’t remember a single reboot. That is, uptime is chic. Microsoft had 30 days at least once when it was necessary to reconfigure everything.
In general, in summary, I can say that the cloud-free (trial) hosting of your services, for testing purposes, of course, has the right to life! And to feel how it really works was pleasant and useful.