Setting up your Google Cloud project for App Engine

A Google Cloud project contains your App Engine application as well as other Google Cloud resources.

You can perform all of your administrative tasks from the Google Cloud CLI and the App Engine Admin API, including the common tasks covered in this topic.

Before you can deploy your apps to the App Engine standard environment, you typically need to create or set up the following:

1. A Cloud project
2. An App Engine application
3. A billing account

Creating a project and application

You can select or create a new Google Cloud project and App Engine application to create and manage a collection of settings, credentials, and your app's metadata. App Engine requires all projects to enable billing, but you will only be charged if a project exceeds its free quota.

Only the Owner role has privileges to create an App Engine application in a Cloud project and that application must exist before any other account can perform tasks on that application. For example, the App Engine application must be created before an account with the App Engine Deployer role can deploy an app using a service account.

Important: Each Cloud project can contain only a single App Engine application, and once created you cannot change the location of your App Engine application.

gcloud

After installing Google Cloud CLI, an account with the Cloud project Owner role can run the following gcloud commands to create a Cloud project and App Engine application:

1. Run the following command to create a Cloud project:

   gcloud projects create

2. Run the following command to select a region and create an App Engine application:

   gcloud app create

   More information about App Engine locations

3. Enable billing in the Billing page of the Google Cloud console, see Enabling billing for details.

   Tips:

   • If you deploy your apps with the gcloud app deploy command, the gcloud CLI will ensure that your Cloud project includes an App Engine application and prompt you to select a region when needed.
   • To check if an App Engine application exists in your Cloud project, you can run the gcloud app describe command.

API

To programmatically create a Cloud project and App Engine application, you use both the Resource Manager API and App Engine Admin API:

1. To create a Cloud project, see Creating a New Project.

2. To create an App Engine application, see Creating App Engine Applications.

3. Enable billing in the Billing page of the Google Cloud console, see Enabling billing for details.

Console

Note: This is not applicable to Python 3.

To create a Cloud project and App Engine application with billing enabled:

1. Go to the App Engine page:

   Go to App Engine

2. Select or create a Cloud project.

3. In the Create App page, select a region, service account, and enable billing:

   1. Select a region to specify where you want to your App Engine application located.
      More information about App Engine locations
   2. Select a service account for your app from Identity and API access.
   3. Select or create a billing account to enable billing in your project.

After the App Engine application is created in your project, the Dashboard page opens.

App Engine Locations

App Engine is regional, which means the infrastructure that runs your apps is located in a specific region, and Google manages it so that it is available redundantly across all of the zones within that region.

Meeting your latency, availability, or durability requirements are primary factors for selecting the region where your apps are run. You can generally select the region nearest to your app's users, but you should consider the locations where App Engine is available as well as the locations of the other Google Cloud products and services that your app uses. Using services across multiple locations can affect your app's latency as well as its pricing.

You cannot change an app's region after you set it.

Note: Two locations, which are called europe-west and us-central in App Engine commands and in the Google Cloud console, are called europe-west1 and us-central1, respectively, elsewhere in Google documentation.

If you already created an App Engine application, you can view its region by doing one of the following:

• Run the gcloud app describe command.

• Open the App Engine Dashboard in the Google Cloud console. The region appears near the top of the page.

OK

Enabling billing

To deploy your apps, you must enable billing. Your account will not be charged if you stay within your free quota. If your application needs resources that exceed the free quota, you will be charged for the additional usage.

If you have a billing account when you create a Cloud project, then billing is automatically enabled on that project.

To enable billing on a Cloud project:

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Billing page:

   Go to Billing

2. Select or create a Cloud project.

3. Depending on if a billing account exists or if the selected Cloud project is associated with an account, the Billing page displays one of the following:

   • If billing is already enabled for the selected Cloud project, then the details about the billing account are listed.

   • If no billing account exists, you are prompted to create a billing account and associate it with the selected Cloud project.

   • If a billing account exists, you are prompted to enable billing if the selected Cloud project is not already associated with a billing account. You can also click Cancel and then click Create account to create and associate a new billing account.

After you enable billing, there is no limit to the amount that you might be charged. To gain more control over your application's costs, you can create a budget and set alerts.

Changing or removing a spending limit

Spending limits enable you to specify an approximate maximum amount you could be charged for using App Engine resources in the standard environment per day.

Spending limits are deprecated. As of December 12, 2019, you can no longer create new spending limits, and existing spending limits will be removed on or after March 31, 2023. For information about other mechanisms to manage costs, see managing costs.

Changing a spending limit

To change an existing spending limit:

1. Log in to the Google Cloud console using an account that has at least one IAM role from each of the following groups:

   • App Engine Admin or project Owner
   • Billing Account Administrator or Billing Account Costs Manager

2. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Application settings page:

   Go to Application settings

3. Click Edit and specify a new spending limit. When you increase the daily spending limit, the new limit takes effect immediately.

4. Click Save to set the spending limit for this Cloud project. If you have more than one Cloud project, you must individually set spending limits in each project.

The spending limit only applies to consumption of App Engine resources. It does not apply to other Google Cloud resources and you will be charged for their usage. Also, spending limits might be exceeded slightly before your application is automatically disabled.

Removing a spending limit

Once the spending limit is removed from a project, you can no longer create spending limits in that project.

To remove a spending limit, contact Support:

1. Log in to the Google Cloud console using an account that has at least one IAM role from each of the following groups:

   • App Engine Admin or project Owner
   • Billing Account Administrator or Billing Account Costs Manager

2. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Support page:

   Support

3. Use your preferred method to contact Support.

Managing billing

Use the Billing page to manage your billing accounts:

1. Go to the Billing page in the Google Cloud console:

   Go to Billing

2. Select the account that you want to manage and then navigate to the corresponding page to perform the following management tasks:

   • See an overview of your billing account, make payments, and add billing account administrators from the Overview page.
   • Create budgets and alerts on the Budgets & alerts page.
   • View your transaction history and download invoices from the Transactions page.
   • Export your billing data to a BigQuery Dataset from the Billing export page.
   • Configure your payment account and contacts on the Payment settings page.
   • Set the method of payment on the Payment method page.

For more information about billing, see the Pricing page.

Creating budgets and setting alerts

You can create a budget for a Cloud project to avoid surprises on your bill and monitor all of your Google Cloud charges from one place. With a budget, you can create alerts that send emails to your billing administrators when charges exceed a certain amount.

To create a budget and set alerts in a Cloud project:

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Billing page:

   Go to Billing

2. Click the billing account for which you want to create a budget.

3. Click Budgets & alerts and then Create budget to begin creating a budget for your Cloud project.

4. Define your budget in the Set budget section and then specify the percentages for which you want to receive email alerts in the following Set budget alerts section.

5. Click Save to set the budget and enable alerts for your Cloud project. If you have multiple Cloud projects, you must individually set budgets and alerts in each project.

Setting project ID for a project

You can specify the project ID in a few different ways:

• By using gcloud init when you install the Google Cloud CLI. To view the default project ID of the gcloud CLI, run gcloud config list.
• By using the gcloud config set project [YOUR_PROJECT_ID] command to set the default project ID of the gcloud CLI.
• By using the --project flag when you deploy your app, for example: gcloud app deploy --project [YOUR_PROJECT_ID]

If you use the Java 11/17 runtime, you can specify the project ID during deployment using the Google Cloud plugin for IntelliJ or the Google Cloud plugin for Eclipse.

Disabling an application

Disable an App Engine application to stop your app from running instances and serving requests. No data loss will occur when you disable your app, nor will any configuration settings change. Simply re-enable your App Engine application to startup instances and continue serving the traffic to your app.

Your app's resources in both the standard and flexible environment are disabled and therefore, won't incur charges. However, billing charges can still occur for the other services in your Cloud project, for example you can still incur storage charges for your stored data.

If your app is actively processing a request, it will continue to complete that task and can take up to an hour before your app is completely disabled.

To disable an App Engine application:

1. Go to the Application settings page:

   Go to Application settings

2. Click Disable application and then follow the prompts.

When you want your app to continue serving requests, enable the App Engine application by returning to the same Application settings page and then clicking Enable application.

Disabling your application stops all serving requests, but your data and state are retained. You will still be billed for applicable charges already incurred or charges for other services running in your project, such as Cloud SQL. To release all the resources used within the project, shut down your project.

Shutting down a project

You can disable billing and release all the Google Cloud resources that are being used in your Cloud project by shutting down that project.

gcloud

After installing the Google Cloud CLI, you run the following gcloud command to shut down a Cloud project:

gcloud projects delete

API

To programmatically shut down your Cloud project, see Shutting Down a Project in the Resource Manager API.

Console

To shut down a Cloud project using the Google Cloud console:

1. Go to the Projects page:

   Go to Projects

2. Select the Cloud project that you want to shut down, then click .

For more information about managing your Cloud projects, see Cloud Resource Manager: creating, shutting down, and restoring projects.