Everything is pre-configured and installed as ASCII.

if I go in and change the default encoding, it is confusing. What if I want to upgrade to PHP& and MariaDB 10? In what order should the default encodings be changed? After upgrading to PHP 7?

The Server, MySQL and PHP all have separate encoding settings. It seems like changing these at the right time during initial configuration is vital.

So if you were installing Magento 2.1 on a GCloud server, how would you go about it?

After the server is created, should I go in and change the default encodings to UTF-8 for the Server, MySQL and PHP and then upgrade to PHP 7 and MariaDB 10 afterwards?
And then change the updated default encodings again afterwards to UTF-8?

Because after upgrading PHP and MySQL, the encoding defaults are blank when I go back to check them (instead of the initial ASCII they came with or the UTF-8 I changed them to before upgrading)...

Should I restart in between?

See how confusing this is?

I cannot create a server without an app. It seems like maybe creating the server first would be best.

For Example:

• Create the server
• Update the encodings for the current PHP and MySQL installation
• Upgrade PHP to PHP7 and MySQL to MariaDB 10
• Update the encodings for PHP7 and MariaDB 10

I think this would be ideal.

Then, install the app onto the server that has had it's default encodings updated to the customer's preference,

There are too many paths available to update these encodings. Before, after, in the middle of everything, etc.

This opens up the possibilities for problems and misconfigurations. And without root (I am not complaining, I am just trying to prove a point), this could turn out bad.

My Setup:
Cloudways - UTF-8 - Magento 2.1 - Google Cloud Platform - N1-STD-2
PHP7, MariDB 10, Varnish and Redis