gcloud compute

Linux Windows

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The gcloud command-line tool lets you manage your Compute Engine resources, using the gcloud compute command group. gcloud compute is an alternative to using the Compute Engine API.

The gcloud tool is part of the Cloud SDK and is a unified command-line tool that includes features like statement autocompletion, in-place updating, command-line help, human-readable and machine-parsable output formats, and integration with Cloud SDK.

Note: Looking for reference pages for gcloud compute commands? Try the command-line --help function. For example, to get help about instance creation, use gcloud compute instances create --help. You can see all command-line documentation at Cloud SDK reference.

If you have never used Compute Engine, get started with either the Linux quickstart or the Windows quickstart.

Before you begin

• If you want to run gcloud compute in a command prompt, install, update, and initialize the Cloud SDK.
• If you don't have a command prompt readily available, try using gcloud compute in Cloud Shell. Cloud Shell is automatically installed, updated, and initialized with the latest Cloud SDK.