Install A VPN Server On Google Compute Engine

In this tutorial, we will go over the simple steps to install an IPSec/L2TP VPN server on google compute engine.
Why?
There are many cases that we need to use a secure channel between a local machine (it might be the firewall of our office or just your development laptop) and our cloud infrastructure. The answer (in most cases) is to have a VPN server in our cloud that will be the entry point. Here we are going to look at a client-server solution. If you are looking at a solution that will give you server to server configuration please go to this post: greenido.wordpress.com/2014/04/10/how-to-set-a-vpn-on-google-compute-engine/

First, I’m going to assume you have an account with Google cloud and you already know how to launch an instance on Google Compute Engine. If not, this post could help you do it in less then 5 min.

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How To Set A Server To Server VPN on Google Compute Engine

There are many cases where you wish to migrate data from one location to another. In most cases, you will wish to do it over a secure channel. In this tutorial we will see what are the main steps in order to set a VPN (in this case: StrongSwan) on Google Compute Engine so you will have a server to server VPN solution between your on own server(s) located in the basement and Compute Engine.
In this tutorial we will setup a VPN connection from your own datacenter to Compute Engine. First, let’s look at the big picture. We wish to have one gateway in our datacenter and another on Compute Engine. These gateways, will be responsible to connect and secure our channel so we could transfer our data over it in a secure way.

High Level Network diagram

Main steps