Concepts

Virtual machine (VM) instances

• Virtual machine instances

  An overview of Compute Engine instances.

• Instance life cycle

  Learn about the life cycle and the different statuses of your Compute Engine instances.

• Machine types

  Learn about the different machine types you can use for your Compute Engine instances.

• CPU platforms

  Learn about the different CPU platforms that you can use for your Compute Engine instances.

• GPUs on Compute Engine

  Learn about the different GPU platforms that you can use for your Compute Engine instances.

• Images

  An overview of images that you can use with Compute Engine instances.

• Guest environment

  The guest environment package allows custom images to work on Compute Engine.

• OS inventory management

  The OS inventory management is used to collect and view operating system details.

• Live migration

  An overview of live migration, a process that keeps your virtual machine instances running during host system events such as software or hardware updates.

• Preemptible VM instances

  An overview of preemptible virtual machine instances.

• Shielded VM

  An overview of Shielded VM, which offers verifiable integrity of your Compute Engine VM instances.

Instance templates

• Instance templates

  An overview of VM instance templates, which can be used to create VM instances and managed instance groups.

Instance groups

• Instance groups

  An overview of VM instance groups, which can be used to manage a group of VM instances as a single entity.

Windows on Compute Engine

• Windows on Compute Engine

  Get an overview of running Windows VM instances on Compute Engine.

• Bringing your licenses to Compute Engine

  Get an overview of bringing your licenses to Compute Engine.

Sole-tenant nodes

• Sole-tenant nodes

  Get an overview of sole-tenant nodes, these nodes are used for hosting dedicated instances for specific projects only.

Storage

• Storage options

  This page compares the different storage solutions that are available to your Compute Engine instances.

• Block storage performance

  This page provides an overview of persistent disk performance and explains how factors such as disk size, machine type, and vCPU count may affect performance limits.

• High availability options using regional persistent disk

  This page provides an overview of how to use regional persistent disk for your high availability services.

VPC networks

• Virtual Private Cloud network overview

  Learn about VPC networks, firewalls, and how your instance interacts with networks and firewalls.

• IP addresses

  Learn about external and internal IP addresses.

• Internal DNS

  Learn about internal DNS service.

Load balancing and scaling

• Compute Engine load balancing and scaling

  An overview of load balancing and autoscaling options for Compute Engine.

Regions and zones

• Viewing available regions and zones

  An explanation and examples of how regions and zones relate to each other.

• Global, regional, and zonal resources

  An overview of different global, regional, and zonal resources.

Access control

• Compute Engine access control options

  An overview of the different ways you can configure access for your users or instances that need to manage your Compute Engine resources.

• Compute Engine IAM roles

  Learn more about using IAM roles with Compute Engine.

• Compute Engine IAM permissions

  Learn more about using IAM permissions with Compute Engine.

• Service accounts

  An overview of service accounts, access scopes, and Cloud Identity and Access Management (Cloud IAM) roles that apply to service accounts.

• OS Login

  Get an overview of how OS Login works, and review the benefits of using OS Login to manage access to your VM instances.

Containers on Compute Engine

• Containers on Compute Engine

  Learn about container technologies that can be run on Compute Engine.