Getting started with Node.js on Compute Engine

This tutorial shows how to get started with Compute Engine. Follow this tutorial by deploying a Hello World Node.js web app to Compute Engine. For help getting started with App Engine, see the App Engine standard environment .

Objectives

Use Cloud Shell to download and deploy a Hello World sample app.
Deploy a Hello World sample app to a single Compute Engine instance.

Costs

In this document, you use the following billable components of Google Cloud:

Compute Engine

To generate a cost estimate based on your projected usage, use the pricing calculator .

New Google Cloud users might be eligible for a free trial .

Before you begin

Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

Go to project selector

Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project .

Enable the Compute Engine API.

Enable the API

In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

Go to project selector

Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project .

Enable the Compute Engine API.

Enable the API

In the Google Cloud console, open the app in Cloud Shell .

Go to Cloud Shell

Cloud Shell provides command-line access to your cloud resources directly from the browser.
If you agree to clone the repository, click Confirmto download the sample code and change into the app directory.

In Cloud Shell, configure the gcloud CLI to use your new Google Cloud project:

 # Configure gcloud for your project 
gcloud  
config  
 set 
  
project  
 YOUR_PROJECT_ID

Run the app in Cloud Shell

If you clicked Go to Cloud Shellin the preceding section, Cloud Shell cloned the nodejs-getting-started repository to your instance. After the instance launches, your working directory is ~/cloudshell_open/nodejs-getting-started/gce . If you are not in this directory, see the steps in Before you begin .

Install dependencies:
```
  npm 
  
 install 
 
```
Run the app:
```
  npm 
  
 start 
 
```
In Cloud Shell, click Web preview, and select Preview on port 8080. This opens a new window with your running app.

To stop the local web server, press Control+C .

Set up Cloud Source Repositories

Enable the Cloud Source Repositories API.

Enable the Cloud Source Repositories API
In the Google Cloud console, go to Cloud Source Repositories.

Go to Cloud Source Repositories
Select Add repository.
Select Create new repository, and then click Continue.
In the Repository namefield, enter new-repo .
In the Projectfield, enter the project ID of the project that you created or selected for this tutorial, and then click Continue.
Select Clone your repository to a local Git repository.
In Cloud Shell, return to root and clone the repository by following the instructions in the Google Cloud SDKtab, and keep this tab open.

Before completing the final step under the instructions, copy your app into your new repository in Cloud Shell:

 cd 
  
new-repo
cp  
../cloudshell_open/nodejs-getting-started/gce/app.js  
app.js
cp  
../cloudshell_open/nodejs-getting-started/gce/package.json  
package.json

Follow the remaining instructions in the Google Cloud SDKtab to commit your changes to your repository. Confirm that you have added your code to the repository by refreshing the browser and checking that your code was added to the repo new-repo .

Deploy to a single instance

This section walks you through running a single instance of your app on Compute Engine.

Single-instance deployment.

From Cloud Shell, you can deploy to a single Compute Engine instance virtual machine (VM) which runs your app.

Use a startup script to initialize an instance

You need a way to instruct your instance to download and run your code. An instance can have a startup script that runs whenever the instance is started or restarted.

Here is the startup script that is included in the Hello World sample app:

  set 
  
-ve # Talk to the metadata server to get the project id 
 PROJECTID 
 = 
 $( 
curl  
-s  
 "http://metadata.google.internal/computeMetadata/v1/project/project-id" 
  
-H  
 "Metadata-Flavor: Google" 
 ) 
 # Install logging monitor. The monitor will automatically pick up logs sent to 
 # syslog. 
curl  
-s  
 "https://storage.googleapis.com/signals-agents/logging/google-fluentd-install.sh" 
  
 | 
  
bash
service  
google-fluentd  
restart  
& # Install dependencies from apt 
apt-get  
update
apt-get  
install  
-yq  
ca-certificates  
git  
build-essential  
supervisor # git requires $HOME and it's not set during the startup script. 
 # Fetch source code 
 export 
  
 HOME 
 = 
/root
git  
clone  
https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/nodejs-getting-started.git  
/opt/app # Install nodejs 
mkdir  
/opt/nodejs
curl  
https://nodejs.org/dist/v22.14.0/node-v22.14.0-linux-x64.tar.xz  
 | 
  
tar  
xvfJ  
-  
-C  
/opt/nodejs  
--strip-components = 
 1 
ln  
-s  
/opt/nodejs/bin/node  
/usr/bin/node
ln  
-s  
/opt/nodejs/bin/npm  
/usr/bin/npm # Install app dependencies 
 cd 
  
/opt/app/gce
npm  
install # Create a nodeapp user. The application will run as this user. 
useradd  
-m  
-d  
/home/nodeapp  
nodeapp
chown  
-R  
nodeapp:nodeapp  
/opt/app # Configure supervisor to run the node app. 
cat  
>/etc/supervisor/conf.d/node-app.conf << 
EOF [ 
program:nodeapp ] 
 directory 
 = 
/opt/app/gce command 
 = 
npm  
start autostart 
 = 
 true 
 autorestart 
 = 
 true 
 user 
 = 
nodeapp environment 
 = 
 HOME 
 = 
 "/home/nodeapp" 
,USER = 
 "nodeapp" 
,NODE_ENV = 
 "production" 
 stdout_logfile 
 = 
syslog stderr_logfile 
 = 
syslog
EOF

supervisorctl  
reread
supervisorctl  
update # Application should now be running under supervisor

The startup script performs the following tasks:

Installs the Cloud Logging agent. The agent automatically collects logs from syslog.
Installs Supervisor to run the app as a daemon.
Clones the app's source code from Cloud Source Repositories and installs dependencies.
Configures Supervisor to run the app. Supervisor makes sure the app is restarted if it exits unexpectedly or is terminated by an admin or other process. It also sends the app's stdout and stderr to syslog to be collected by the Logging agent.

Create and configure a Compute Engine instance

Create a Compute Engine instance:

Linux/macOS

  gcloud 
  
 compute 
  
 instances 
  
 create 
  
 my 
 - 
 app 
 - 
 instance 
  
 \ 
  
 -- 
 image 
 - 
 family 
 = 
 debian 
 - 
 9 
  
 \ 
  
 -- 
 image 
 - 
 project 
 = 
 debian 
 - 
 cloud 
  
 \ 
  
 -- 
 machine 
 - 
 type 
 = 
 g1 
 - 
 small 
  
 \ 
  
 -- 
 scopes 
  
 userinfo 
 - 
 email 
 , 
 cloud 
 - 
 platform 
  
 \ 
  
 -- 
 metadata 
  
 app 
 - 
 location 
 = 
 us 
 - 
 central1 
 - 
 f 
  
 \ 
  
 -- 
 metadata 
 - 
 from 
 - 
 file 
  
 startup 
 - 
 script 
 = 
 gce 
 / 
 startup 
 - 
 script 
 . 
 sh 
  
 \ 
  
 -- 
 zone 
  
 us 
 - 
 central1 
 - 
 f 
  
 \ 
  
 -- 
 tags 
  
 http 
 - 
 server

Windows

  gcloud 
  
 compute 
  
 instances 
  
 create 
  
 my 
 - 
 app 
 - 
 instance 
  
 ^ 
  
 -- 
 image 
 - 
 family 
 = 
 debian 
 - 
 9 
  
 ^ 
  
 -- 
 image 
 - 
 project 
 = 
 debian 
 - 
 cloud 
  
 ^ 
  
 -- 
 machine 
 - 
 type 
 = 
 g1 
 - 
 small 
  
 ^ 
  
 -- 
 scopes 
  
 userinfo 
 - 
 email 
 , 
 cloud 
 - 
 platform 
  
 ^ 
  
 -- 
 metadata 
 - 
 from 
 - 
 file 
  
 startup 
 - 
 script 
 = 
 gce 
 / 
 startup 
 - 
 script 
 . 
 sh 
  
 ^ 
  
 -- 
 zone 
  
 us 
 - 
 central1 
 - 
 f 
  
 ^ 
  
 -- 
 tags 
  
 http 
 - 
 server

Replace the zone with a development zone, for example us-central1-a . For more information on regions and zones, see Geography and regions .

This creates a new instance, allows it to access Google Cloud services, and runs your startup script. The instance name is my-app-instance .

Check the progress of the instance creation:
```
gcloud compute instances get-serial-port-output my-app-instance --zone YOUR_ZONE 
```
Replace YOUR_ZONE with the zone you deployed your instance to.

When the startup script is complete, you see the following message:
```
startup-script: INFO Finished running startup scripts.
```

Create a firewall rule to allow traffic to your instance:

  gcloud 
  
 compute 
  
 firewall 
 - 
 rules 
  
 create 
  
 default 
 - 
 allow 
 - 
 http 
 - 
 8080 
  
 \ 
  
 -- 
 allow 
  
 tcp 
 : 
 8080 
  
 \ 
  
 -- 
 source 
 - 
 ranges 
  
 0.0.0.0 
 / 
 0 
  
 \ 
  
 -- 
 target 
 - 
 tags 
  
 http 
 - 
 server 
  
 \ 
  
 -- 
 description 
  
 "Allow port 8080 access to http-server"

Get the external IP address of your instance:

  gcloud 
  
 compute 
  
 instances 
  
 list

To see your app running, enter this URL in your browser:
```
http:// YOUR_INSTANCE_IP 
:8080
```
Replace YOUR_INSTANCE_IP with the external IP address of your instance.

Manage and monitor an instance

You can use the Google Cloud console to monitor and manage your instance.

In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instancespage.
Go to VM instances
In the list of virtual machine instances, click SSHin the row of the instance that you want to connect to.
To view all of the logs generated by your Compute Engine resources, go to the Logs Explorer page.
Go to Logs Explorer
Cloud Logging is automatically configured to gather logs from various common services, including syslog .

Clean up

To avoid incurring charges to your Google Cloud account for the resources used in this tutorial, either delete the project that contains the resources, or keep the project and delete the individual resources.

Delete the project

In the Google Cloud console, go to the Manage resources page.
Go to Manage resources
In the project list, select the project that you want to delete, and then click Delete .
In the dialog, type the project ID, and then click Shut down to delete the project.

Delete the individual resources

gcloud  
compute  
instances  
delete  
my-app-instance  
--zone = 
 YOUR_ZONE 
  
--delete-disks = 
all
gcloud  
compute  
firewall-rules  
delete  
default-allow-http-8080

What's next

Explore reference architectures, diagrams, and best practices about Google Cloud. Take a look at our Cloud Architecture Center .
For other Node.js resources for building your apps, see the following:
- Manage and monitor your Instance Group deployment at Compute Engine > Instance groups .
- Manage your load balancing configuration, including URL maps and backend services, at Network services > Load balancing .
- Handle sessions with Firestore
- Authenticate users with Identity-Aware Proxy
- Deploy an app to Google Kubernetes Engine
- Explore other Google Cloud services .

Getting started with Node.js on Compute Engine Stay organized with collections Save and categorize content based on your preferences.

Objectives

Costs

Before you begin

Run the app in Cloud Shell

Set up Cloud Source Repositories

Deploy to a single instance

Use a startup script to initialize an instance

Create and configure a Compute Engine instance

Linux/macOS

Windows

Manage and monitor an instance

Clean up

Delete the project

Delete the individual resources

What's next

Getting started with Node.js on Compute Engine