GCP deployment

Overview

This topic covers everything needed to get the DCT appliance running on GCP: prerequisites to complete before you begin, selecting the DCT image, launching and configuring the instance, and first boot. Confirm that your environment meets the requirements on the GCP requirements page before starting.

Prerequisites

  • Have a GCP project with the Compute Engine API enabled.

  • Identify the VPC and subnet where the DCT instance will run.

  • Create or identify a GCP Service Account to attach to the DCT instance at creation time. Key-file authentication is not supported; the Service Account must be attached directly to the VM.

  • Disable OS Login for the project or the specific instance. See GCP requirements for details.

Select the DCT image

Delphix publishes a public GCE Custom Image for each DCT release. You can reference this image directly when creating your instance -- no download or manual image import is required.

GCP images are global resources. The published DCT image can be used to launch instances in any region.

Alternative: manual image import

If your environment cannot access the public Delphix image (for example, air-gapped or restricted projects), you can create the image manually from a tar.gz file:

  1. Install the gcloud CLI. For more information, read Install the Google Cloud CLI.

  2. Download the DCT GCP tar.gz file from the Delphix download site under the DCT Appliance folder.

  3. Download the Secure Boot certificate archive (gcp-certs.tar.gz) from the Delphix download site and extract the certificate files (PK.cer, KEK.cer, db.cer).

  4. Upload the tar.gz file to a Cloud Storage (GCS) bucket and note the gs:// URI.

  5. Run the following command to create the custom image:

    Copy 
    gcloud compute images create dct-VERSION \
      --source-uri=gs://BUCKET/Delphix_VERSION_Dct_GCP.tar.gz \
      --guest-os-features=UEFI_COMPATIBLE,GVNIC \
      --platform-key-file=PK.cer \
      --key-exchange-key-file=KEK.cer \
      --signature-database-file=db.cer \
      --storage-location=REGION

  6. Verify the image appears in Compute Engine > Images in the Google Cloud Console.

Launch the instance

  1. In the Google Cloud Console, navigate to Compute Engine > VM instances and click Create instance.

  2. Configure the instance:

    1. Select the Region and Zone for your deployment.

    2. Select a Machine type that meets the minimum requirements. Recommended: n2-standard-8 (8 vCPU, 32 GB).

    3. Under Boot disk, click Change. Select Custom images, choose the Delphix DCT image (either the public image or your manually imported image), set the disk type to SSD Persistent Disk, and confirm the size is 128 GB.

    4. Under Advanced options > Disks, click Add new disk to add the metadata volume. Set the size to 50 GB minimum and the type to SSD Persistent Disk.

    5. Under Networking, select your VPC and Subnet. Assign or reserve a static internal IP address. A static external IP is optional.

    6. Ensure Firewall rules allow inbound TCP 443 to the instance.

    7. Under Identity and API access, attach a Service Account to the instance. Attached-SA is the only supported IAM path for DCT on GCP; key-file authentication is not supported.

    8. Under Security > Shielded VM, enable Turn on Secure Boot, Turn on vTPM, and Turn on Integrity Monitoring.

  3. Click Create.

Start the instance and complete network setup

  1. Once the instance is running, open the Serial Console in the Google Cloud Console to monitor boot progress.

  2. Wait for both the Delphix Management Service and the Delphix DCT Service to appear as online in the console output. This process can take up to 30 minutes on first boot.

  3. Once the services are online, confirm network connectivity to the instance IP address from your browser.

Complete initial setup

Once the instance is network-accessible, complete the Setup UI wizard to configure credentials, TLS, storage, and engine registration.

  1. From a supported browser, navigate to https://<instance-ip>.

  2. Log in with the default credentials: username sysadmin, password sysadmin. You will be prompted to set a new password immediately.

  3. Follow the steps in the Setup UI wizard to configure Time, Network, Network Security (KeyStore/TrustStore), Storage, and Registration.

After setup completes, the DCT application UI is available at https://<instance-ip>/dct. The Setup UI remains accessible via a link on the DCT login screen.