PING COMMAND Gcloud vs SSH

[adarshraghav]

What I have noticed is that if I have to check whether my instances can communicate with each other i usually need to SSH into the instance and run the PING command. But is there a way I cloud do it directly do it using the Gcloud terminal rather than SSHing into the instances?

[Sima]

Hi  Adarshraghav,

You can connect to a VM instance by using SSH or “ gcloud compute ssh “. You may also find the gcloud CLI cheat sheet for Virtual Machines & Compute Engine.

[kumards · Accepted solution]

I think @adarshraghav 's question is about checking network reachability among a given set of VMs (e.g., whether VM-A can send traffic to VM-B) without actually connecting to any of the VMs.

@adarshraghav - You might find the Network Connectivity Tests feature useful: https://cloud.google.com/network-intelligence-center/docs/connectivity-tests/how-to/running-connecti....

[beejer]

oh just checkout my  best solution for this problem 

[beejer]

there's a more efficient way to check the network connectivity between your instances without needing to SSH into each instance and manually run the `ping` command. Google Cloud provides a feature called "Internal IP Forwarding" that allows you to test network connectivity directly from the Google Cloud Shell or from within the Google Cloud Console.

Here's how you can use this feature to test the network connectivity between your instances:

1. Using Google Cloud Shell

If you're using the Google Cloud Shell, you can use the `gcloud compute ssh` command along with the `--internal-ip` flag to test connectivity between instances. This avoids the need to SSH into each instance separately. Here's an example:

```bash
gcloud compute ssh INSTANCE_NAME --internal-ip --command "ping -c 4 OTHER_INSTANCE_INTERNAL_IP"
```

Replace `INSTANCE_NAME` with the name of the instance you're connecting from and `OTHER_INSTANCE_INTERNAL_IP` with the internal IP address of the instance you want to test connectivity to.

This command will run the `ping` command directly from the Google Cloud Shell, using the internal IP addresses of the instances.

2. Using Google Cloud Console

If you prefer using the Google Cloud Console, follow these steps:

- Navigate to the "Compute Engine" section.
- Select the instance you want to test connectivity from.
- In the "Details" tab, scroll down to the "Network details" section.
- Find the "Internal IP Forwarding" option and click the "Check network connectivity" link.
- In the dialog that appears, select the target instance you want to test connectivity to.
- Click the "Check" button.

The Google Cloud Console will perform the connectivity test and display the results.

By utilizing the "Internal IP Forwarding" feature, you can conveniently test network connectivity between instances without the need to SSH into each instance individually. This can save you time and effort, especially when managing multiple instances.

Remember to replace the placeholder values (`INSTANCE_NAME` and `OTHER_INSTANCE_INTERNAL_IP`) with actual values relevant to your environment.

Feel free to explore more of Google Cloud's features to enhance your cloud management experience. If you have any more questions or need further assistance, I'm here to help!