Get set up on Google Cloud

To get you started using Vertex AI, this page guides you through how to create a Google Cloud project and enable the Vertex AI APIs. If you don't have the permissions to perform these tasks, ask an administrator to setup a project and enable Vertex AI for you. Also covered in this page is how to set up the Google Cloud CLI in your local development environment.

Set up a project

Follow these steps to set up a project:

  1. Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.
  2. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Go to project selector

  3. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  4. Enable the Vertex AI API.

    Enable the API

  5. Install the Google Cloud CLI.
  6. To initialize the gcloud CLI, run the following command:

    gcloud init
  7. Update and install gcloud components:
    gcloud components update
    gcloud components install beta
  8. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Go to project selector

  9. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  10. Enable the Vertex AI API.

    Enable the API

  11. Install the Google Cloud CLI.
  12. To initialize the gcloud CLI, run the following command:

    gcloud init
  13. Update and install gcloud components:
    gcloud components update
    gcloud components install beta

Enable Vertex AI APIs

  1. In the Google Cloud console, make sure your project name is displayed at the top of your Google Cloud console. If it's not, click Select a project to open the Project Selector, and select your intended project.
  2. If you aren't in the Vertex AI portion of the Google Cloud console, do the following:
    1. In Search, enter Vertex AI, then return
    2. In the search results, click Vertex AI
      The Vertex AI dashboard appears.
  3. Click Enable All Recommended APIs in the Vertex AI dashboard.
    enable all recommended APIs
    It might take a few moments for the enabling process to complete. A blue ring circling the bell icon appears in the upper right of the Google Cloud console as the APIs are being enabled.

Install the Google Cloud CLI

  1. To activate Google Cloud services and gain access to useful tools like gsutil, which enables transferring files to and from Cloud Storage, install the Google Cloud CLI.
  2. To initialize the gcloud CLI, run the following command from your command prompt:
    gcloud init
  3. To update and install beta Google Cloud CLI components, run the following:
    gcloud components update
    gcloud components install beta

Ask an administrator to set up a Vertex AI project for you

This section describes how an administrator grants the roles needed to use Vertex AI.

  1. Determine a meaningful project name and project ID to identify your project. If you are part of an organization or plan to create multiple projects, consider what naming conventions and folder hierarchies are followed, or could be followed, to make project organization clear.
  2. Required roles:
    1. Access to most Vertex AI capabilities is granted by the Vertex AI User (roles/aiplatform.user) IAM role and should suffice for most Vertex AI users. For full control of Vertex AI resources, you can request the Vertex AI Administrator (roles/aiplatform.admin) role. To explore the differences between these and other Vertex AI roles, see Vertex AI access control with IAM.
    2. If you also intend to use Vertex AI Workbench notebooks in Google Cloud, ask your administrator to grant you the Notebooks Administrator (roles/notebooks.admin) IAM role for the project, as well as the Service Account User (roles/iam.serviceAccountUser) IAM role on either the project or the Compute Engine default service account.
    3. Additionally, to enable the necessary APIs, you either need the Service Usage Admin (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin) IAM role or your administrator needs to enable the APIs for you by following the first few steps.
  3. Ask your administrator to enable Vertex AI APIs for you. If you're granted the Service Usage Admin (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin) IAM role, then you'll be able to do this on your own by following the Enable Vertex AI APIs section.

What's next