Create VMs in bulk

This document explains how to create virtual machine (VM) instances that are deployed on Hypercompute Cluster. For more information about creating VMs in bulk, see About bulk creation of VMs in the Compute Engine documentation.

After you request blocks of resources and Compute Engine provisions them, you can start consuming these blocks by creating VMs in bulk. This is useful for managing groups of VMs and incorporating your own workload scheduler.

To learn about other ways to create VMs or clusters, see the Overview page.

Before you begin

Select the tab for how you plan to use the samples on this page:
gcloud

In the Google Cloud console, activate Cloud Shell.

Activate Cloud Shell

At the bottom of the Google Cloud console, a Cloud Shell session starts and displays a command-line prompt. Cloud Shell is a shell environment with the Google Cloud CLI already installed and with values already set for your current project. It can take a few seconds for the session to initialize.
REST

To use the REST API samples on this page in a local development environment, you use the credentials you provide to the gcloud CLI.
For more information, see Authenticate for using REST in the Google Cloud authentication documentation.

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to create VMs in bulk, ask your administrator to grant you the Compute Instance Admin (v1) (roles/compute.instanceAdmin.v1) IAM role on the project. For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

This predefined role contains the permissions required to create VMs in bulk. To see the exact permissions that are required, expand the Required permissions section:

Required permissions

The following permissions are required to create VMs in bulk:

compute.instances.create on the project
To use a custom image to create the VM: compute.images.useReadOnly on the image
To use a snapshot to create the VM: compute.snapshots.useReadOnly on the snapshot
To use an instance template to create the VM: compute.instanceTemplates.useReadOnly on the instance template
To assign a legacy network to the VM: compute.networks.use on the project
To specify a static IP address for the VM: compute.addresses.use on the project
To assign an external IP address to the VM when using a legacy network: compute.networks.useExternalIp on the project
To specify a subnet for your VM: compute.subnetworks.use on the project or on the chosen subnet
To assign an external IP address to the VM when using a VPC network: compute.subnetworks.useExternalIp on the project or on the chosen subnet
To set VM instance metadata for the VM: compute.instances.setMetadata on the project
To set tags for the VM: compute.instances.setTags on the VM
To set labels for the VM: compute.instances.setLabels on the VM
To set a service account for the VM to use: compute.instances.setServiceAccount on the VM
To create a new disk for the VM: compute.disks.create on the project
To attach an existing disk in read-only or read-write mode: compute.disks.use on the disk
To attach an existing disk in read-only mode: compute.disks.useReadOnly on the disk

You might also be able to get these permissions with custom roles or other predefined roles.

Create VPC networks

A3 Ultra VMs have ten NICs: two for the host machine and eight for the GPUs. To use these multi-NICs, you need to create three Virtual Private Cloud networks as follows:

2 gVNIC networks, each with a subnetwork: these are used for host to host communication. For more information about GVNIC, see Using Google Virtual NIC.
1 RDMA network with 8 subnetworks: these are designed for GPU to GPU communication by using the NVIDIA ConnectX-7 NICs that are available with your A3 Ultra VMs. For more information about the RDMA network profile, see RDMA network profiles.

To set up the networks, you can either use the following instruction guides or use the provided script.

Instruction guides

To create the networks, you can use the following instructions:

To create the host networks, see Create and manage Virtual Private Cloud networks.
To create the GPU networks, see Create a Virtual Private Cloud network for RDMA NICs.

Script

To create the networks, you can use the following script.

  #!/bin/bash

  # Create standard VPCs (network and subnets) for the GVNICs
  for N in $(seq 0 1); do
    gcloud beta compute networks create GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-net-$N \
      --subnet-mode=custom

    gcloud beta compute networks subnets create GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-sub-$N \
      --network=GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-net-$N \
      --region=REGION \
      --range=10.$N.0.0/16

    gcloud beta compute firewall-rules create GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-internal-$N \
      --network=GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-net-$N \
      --action=ALLOW \
      --rules=tcp:0-65535,udp:0-65535,icmp \
      --source-ranges=10.0.0.0/8
  done

  # Create SSH firewall rules
  gcloud beta compute firewall-rules create GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-ssh \
    --network=GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-net-0 \
    --action=ALLOW \
    --rules=tcp:22 \
    --source-ranges=IP_RANGE

  # Assumes that an external IP is only created for vNIC 0
  gcloud beta compute firewall-rules create GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-allow-ping-net-0 \
    --network=GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-net-0 \
    --action=ALLOW \
    --rules=icmp \
    --source-ranges=IP_RANGE

  # List and make sure network profiles exist
  gcloud beta compute network-profiles list

  # Create network for CX-7
  gcloud beta compute networks create RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma \
    --network-profile=ZONE-vpc-roce \
    --subnet-mode custom

  # Create subnets.
  for N in $(seq 0 7); do
    gcloud beta compute networks subnets create RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma-sub-$N \
      --network=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma \
      --region=REGION \
      --range=10.$((N+2)).0.0/16  # offset to avoid overlap with gvnics
  done

Replace the following:

GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX: the name prefix to use for the standard Virtual Private Cloud networks and subnets that use GVNIC NICs.
RDMA_NAME_PREFIX: the name prefix to use for the Virtual Private Cloud networks and subnets that use RDMA NICs.
ZONE: the zone where you want to create the networks. For the preview, the only supported zone is europe-west1-b.
REGION: the region where you want to create the networks. This must correspond to the zone specified. For example, if your zone is europe-west1-b, then your region is europe-west1.
IP_RANGE: the IP range to use for the SSH firewall rules.

Create VMs

To create your VMs in bulk, use one of the following methods:

gcloud

To create the VMs, use the gcloud beta compute instances bulk create command:

gcloud beta compute instances bulk create \
    --name-pattern=NAME_PATTERN \
    --count=COUNT \
    --machine-type=MACHINE_TYPE \
    --image-family=IMAGE_FAMILY \
    --image-project=IMAGE_PROJECT \
    --reservation-affinity=specific \
    --reservation=RESERVATION \
    --provisioning-model=RESERVATION_BOUND \
    --instance-termination-action=DELETE \
    --region=REGION \
    --boot-disk-type=hyperdisk-balanced \
    --boot-disk-size=DISK_SIZE \
    --scopes=cloud-platform \
    --network-interface=nic-type=GVNIC,network=GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-net-0,subnet=GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-sub-0 \
    --network-interface=nic-type=GVNIC,network=GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-net-1,subnet=GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-net-1,no-address \
    --network-interface=nic-type=MRDMA,network=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma,subnet=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma-sub-0,no-address \
    --network-interface=nic-type=MRDMA,network=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma,subnet=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma-sub-1,no-address \
    --network-interface=nic-type=MRDMA,network=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma,subnet=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma-sub-2,no-address \
    --network-interface=nic-type=MRDMA,network=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma,subnet=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma-sub-3,no-address \
    --network-interface=nic-type=MRDMA,network=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma,subnet=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma-sub-4,no-address \
    --network-interface=nic-type=MRDMA,network=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma,subnet=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma-sub-5,no-address \
    --network-interface=nic-type=MRDMA,network=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma,subnet=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma-sub-6,no-address \
    --network-interface=nic-type=MRDMA,network=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma,subnet=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma-sub-7,no-address

Replace the following:

NAME_PATTERN: the name pattern of the VMs. For example, using vm-# for the name pattern generates VMs with names such as vm-1 and vm-2, up to the number of VMs specified by --count.
COUNT: the number of VMs to create.
MACHINE_TYPE: the machine type to use for the VM. For this preview, the only supported machine type is a3-ultragpu-8g.
IMAGE_FAMILY: the image family of the OS image that you want to use. For a list of supported operating systems, see Supported operating systems.
IMAGE_PROJECT: the project ID of the OS image.

RESERVATION: for this value, you can either specify the reservation name or a specific block within a reservation. To get the reservation name or the available blocks, see View capacity. Choose one of the following:

Reservation value	When to use
`RESERVATION_NAME` For example: `exr-5010-01`	If you are using a placement policy. The placement policy will be applied to the reservation and the VMs are placed on a single block. If you aren't using a placement policy and are ok with VMs placed anywhere in your reservation.
`RESERVATION_NAME/reservationBlocks/RESERVATION_BLOCK_NAME` For example: `exr-5010-01/reservationBlocks/exr-5010-01-block-1`	If you aren't using a placement policy and want your VMs to be placed in a specific block.

REGION: the region where you want to create the VMs For the preview, the only supported zone is europe-west1.
DISK_SIZE: the size of the boot disk in GB.

REST

To create the VMs, make a POST request to the instances.insert method as follows:

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION/instances/bulkInsert
  {
    {
      "namePattern":"NAME_PATTERN",
      "count":"COUNT",
      "instanceProperties":{
         "machineType":"MACHINE_TYPE",
         "disks":[
            {
               "boot":true,
               "initializeParams":{
                  "diskSizeGb":"DISK_SIZE",
                  "diskType":"hyperdisk-balanced",
                  "sourceImage":"projects/IMAGE_PROJECT/global/images/family/IMAGE_FAMILY"
               },
               "mode":"READ_WRITE",
               "type":"PERSISTENT"
            }
         ],
         "name":"default",
         "networkInterfaces":[
            {
               "network":"NETWORK",
               "nicType":"GVNIC"
            }
         ],
         "reservationAffinity":{
            "consumeReservationType":"SPECIFIC_RESERVATION",
            "key":"compute.googleapis.com/reservation-name",
            "values":[
               "RESERVATION"
            ],
            "scheduling":{
               "provisioningModel":"RESERVATION_BOUND",
               "instanceTerminationAction":"DELETE",
               "automaticRestart":true
            }
         }
      }
   }
  }

Replace the following:

PROJECT_ID: the project ID of the project where you want to create the VM.
REGION: the region where you want to create the VM. For the preview, the only supported region is europe-west1.
NAME_PATTERN: the name pattern of the VMs. For example, using vm-# for the name pattern generates VMs with names such as vm-1 and vm-2, up to the number of VMs specified by --count.
COUNT: the number of VMs to create.
MACHINE_TYPE: the machine type to use for the VM. For this preview, the only supported machine type is a3-ultragpu-8g.
VM_NAME: the name of the VM.
DISK_SIZE: the size of the boot disk in GB.
IMAGE_PROJECT: the project ID of the OS image.
IMAGE_FAMILY: the image family of the OS image that you want to use. For a list of supported operating systems, see Supported operating systems.

RESERVATION: for this value, you can either specify the the reservation name or a specific block within a reservation. To get the reservation name or the available blocks, see View capacity. Choose one of the following:

Reservation value	When to use
`RESERVATION_NAME` For example: `exr-5010-01`	If you are using a placement policy. The placement policy will be applied to the reservation and the VMs are placed on a single block. If you aren't using a placement policy and are ok with VMs placed anywhere in your reservation.
`RESERVATION_NAME/reservationBlocks/RESERVATION_BLOCK_NAME` For example: `exr-5010-01/reservationBlocks/exr-5010-01-block-1`	If you aren't using a placement policy and want your VMs to be placed in a specific block.

For more information about the configuration options when creating VMs in bulk, see Create VMs in bulk in the Compute Engine documentation.

Create VMs in bulk

Before you begin

gcloud

REST

Required roles

Required permissions

Create VPC networks

Instruction guides

Script

Create VMs

gcloud

REST

What's next