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Run shell commands and orchestrate Compute Engine VMs with Cloud Workflows
Automate the execution of shell commands in a fully serverless and secure way without managing private keys. What a joy for a Cloud Architect to work with.
Sometimes, as part of a workflow process, it is necessary to connect to a VM in order to perform different tasks. We are going to cover connecting to a Linux VM and performing different tasks like copying files, or a script to import/update a database by using Cloud Workflows.
This article covers how to define Cloud Workflow to start a VM machine, connect to the Compute Engine shell, execute shell commands securely with the use of Cloud Build and Identity-Aware Proxy.
There are automation processes that don’t fit Cloud Run stack as they need access to the disk for persistence or large file handling, and they should be carried out on a VM, this could be turned on only for the duration of the task only. We were in one of these situations with USPTO Trademark Search API, where we had to process files daily, we didn’t need the machine for something else, as we have the rest of the architecture on serverless.
Turning on the VM and running the task and automating it via Cloud Workflows have changed how we run this now. This article is the result of combining workflows with VM shell commands to…
