Thanks for being thorough and prompt.
So, bitnami VMs actually have a public IP when you create them. Please take a look at the photo attached. When I paste that IP in my browser, I see the default page (basically index,html page that’s on the VM). With the ppk file and this IP that bitnami provides here, I am able to use putty ssh client to connect to ssh into the server and access phpmyadmin, install ssl certificates using the command line etc. I am also able to transfer files (html,js,php) from my computer into my VM using filezilla. So this system doesn’t scale at this point. But the php database driven web application works and can easily be updated.
Since the goal now is to add auto scaling and load balancing before launching to the public, I started with creating an instance template from an existing VM that bitnami has created in my GCP project accessible through the console. This VM has the same external IP like shown in the photo. When I set public IP as none, as suggested on this post, this external IP disappears and I can’t use Putty or filezilla like before since they all require this IP address to grant access.
On the other hand, I successfully followed all the steps for auto scaling and load balancing and everything worked. But only that I have no way to access my files, database etc, and I can’t change the default page shown when I visit the dns/ip address shown on my load balancer.
Would your suggestion still be the same or there is an easier way that can help me scale this system while leaving me with the same control I had before I decided to try auto scaling and load balancing?
Note: To create the VM in bitnami we use the Google Cloud Launch pad and this doesn’t allow you to specify whether the IP for your VM should be public or private, public is the default like you see in the photo
