Guided Lab: Establishing VPC Peering for Secure Cross‑Network Communication
Description
Google Cloud VPC Network Peering enables direct communication between two Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) networks, allowing resources in each network to interact seamlessly. These peered networks can reside within the same project, across different projects in the same organization, or even between projects belonging to separate organizations.
In this guided lab, you will learn how to establish VPC Network Peering between two Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) networks in Google Cloud. This exercise demonstrates how to enable private communication across networks without using external IP addresses or VPNs.
Prerequisites
To ensure the successful completion of this lab, we highly recommend taking the following guided labs to gain the necessary understanding:
- Guided Lab: How to Launch a GCP Compute Engine Linux Instance
- Guided Lab: Creating a Custom Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Objectives
In this lab, you will:
- Create two VPC networks.
- Set up VPC peering between the two networks.
- Launch VM instances in each VPC.
- Test connectivity between the VM instances.
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Create VPC Networks
1. In the Console, go to VPC network > VPC networks.
2. Create a new VPC network named vpc-network-1 with a custom subnet (e.g., 10.0.0.0/24).
- Under Subnets, add a new subnet named
vpc-network-1-subnet - Region: us-central1
- IP Stack: IPv4
- IPv4 range: 10.0.0.0/24
- Under Firewall rules, select all IPv4 firewall rules
- Leave other configurations at their default values.
- Click Create.
3. Create another VPC network named vpc-network-2 with a different custom subnet (e.g., 10.1.0.0/24).
- Under Subnets, add a new subnet named
vpc-network-2-subnet - Region: us-central1
- IP Stack: IPv4
- IPv4 range: 10.1.0.0/24
- Under Firewall rules, select all IPv4 firewall rules
- Leave other configurations at their default values.
- Click Create.
Set Up VPC Peering
1. In the Console, go to VPC network > VPC network peering.
2. Click Create connection > Continue
3. Configure the peering from vpc-network-1 to vpc-network-2
- Peering connection name: peer-1-to-2.
- Your VPC Network: vpc-network-1
- Peered VPC network:
- In project …
- VPC network name: vpc-network-2
- Leave other configurations at their default values.
- Click Create.
4. Configure the peering from vpc-network-2 to vpc-network-1
- Peering connection name: peer-2-to-1.
- Your VPC Network: vpc-network-2
- Peered VPC network:
- In project …
- VPC network name: vpc-network-1
- Leave other configurations at their default values.
- Click Create.
Create VM Instances
1. Go to Compute Engine > VM instances.
2. Create a VM instance named vm-instance-1 in vpc-network-1.
- Machine type: e2-micro
- Under Networking > Network interfaces
- Edit the Network interface from default to vpc-network-1
- Leave other configurations at their default values.
- Click Create.
3. Create another VM instance named vm-instance-2 in vpc-network-2.
- Machine type: e2-micro
- Under Networking > Network interfaces
- Edit the Network interface from default to vpc-network-2
- Leave other configurations at their default values.
- Click Create.
Test Connectivity
1. In the Console, click SSH for vm-instance-1 to open a browser SSH session.
2. Ping the internal IP address of vm-instance-2 to test connectivity.
From the shell, run:
ping <internal-ip-of-vm-instance-2>
This output indicates successful communication between the two VM instances over the peered VPC networks.
Congratulations! You have successfully created two VPC networks, established peering between them, launched VM instances, and verified connectivity. This setup is foundational for building secure and scalable cloud network architectures.