Images

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Use operating system images to create boot disks for your instances. You can use one of the following image types:

• Public images are provided and maintained by Google, open source communities, and third-party vendors. By default, all Google Cloud projects have access to these images and can use them to create instances.
• Custom images are available only to your Google Cloud project. You can create a custom image from boot disks and other images. Then, use the custom image to create an instance.

You can use most public images at no additional cost, but there are some premium images that do add additional cost to your instances. Custom images that you import to Compute Engine add no cost to your instances, but do incur an image storage charge while you keep your custom image in your project.

Some images are capable of running containers on Compute Engine.

To view the source image for a VM, see Viewing source image.

Public images

Compute Engine offers many preconfigured public images that have compatible Linux or Windows operating systems. Use these operating system images to create and start instances. Compute Engine uses your selected image to create a persistent boot disk for each instance. By default, the boot disk for an instance is the same size as the image that you selected. If your instance requires a larger persistent boot disk than the image size, resize the boot disk.

List of public images available on Compute Engine

You can see the full list of public images with their image names, versions numbers, and image sizes, by using the Google Cloud console or the Google Cloud CLI. Google updates public images regularly, or when a patch for a critical impact common vulnerability and exposure (CVE) is available.

Console

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Images page.

   Go to Images

   By default, the Google Cloud console list all OS images available in the Compute Engine images, Deep Learning VM Images, and HPC images projects.

gcloud

gcloud compute images list

By default, the gcloud CLI list all OS images available in the Compute Engine images projects.

Note: Use of the operating systems on these images is subject to additional licensing terms. For more information about operating system licensing in Google Cloud, see Terms of Service and the documentation provided by the following operating system vendors.

Compute Engine provides public images with 64-bit versions of the following operating systems. For more information about each OS, including how each OS is customized to run on Compute Engine, see Operating system details.

Custom images

A custom image is a boot disk image that you own and control access to. Use custom images for the following tasks:

• Import a virtual disk to Compute Engine from your on-premises environment or from VMs that are running on your local workstation or on another cloud platform. You can manually import boot disk images to Compute Engine, but one disk at a time.

  Note: If you are planning to migrate several VMs to Compute Engine, consider using the VM migration service.

• Create an image from the boot disks of your existing Compute Engine instances. Then use that image to create new boot disks for your instances. This process lets you to create new instances that are preconfigured with the apps that you need without having to configure a public image from scratch.

• Copy one image to another image by using either the gcloud CLI or the API. Use the same process that you use to create an image, but specify another image as the image source. You can also create an image from a custom image in a different project.

Guest operating system features

Some guest operating system features are available only on certain images. For example, multiqueue SCSI is enabled only on some public images.

If you need to enable these features on your custom images, specify one or more guest operating system features when you create a custom image.

Image families

Image families help you manage images in your project by grouping related images together, so that you can roll forward and roll back between specific image versions. An image family always points to the latest version of an image that is not deprecated. Most public images are grouped into an image family. For example, the debian-11 image family in the debian-cloud project always points to the most recent Debian 11 image.

Custom image families

If you regularly update your custom images with newer configurations and software, you can group those images into a custom image family. The image family always points to the most recent image in that family, so your instance templates and scripts can use that image without having to update references to a specific image version.

Also, because the image family never points to a deprecated image, you can roll the image family back to a previous image version by deprecating the most recent image in that family.

For more information, see Setting image versions in an image family.

For best practices recommendations when working with image families, see Image families best practices.

Community supported images

Community-supported images are not directly supported by Compute Engine. It is up to the project community to ensure that images work with Compute Engine features and that security updates are maintained. Community-supported images are provided as-is by the project communities that build and maintain them.

Note: Community-supported images don't incur licensing charges on Google Cloud.

AlmaLinux

AlmaLinux is a free operating system offered by the AlmaLinux project. AlmaLinux images are available in the almalinux-cloud project. To list AlmaLinux images, use the following gcloud command:

gcloud compute images list --project almalinux-cloud --no-standard-images

Fedora Cloud

Fedora Cloud is a free operating system maintained by the Fedora Cloud project. Fedora Cloud images are available in the fedora-cloud project. To list Fedora Cloud images, use the following gcloud command:

gcloud compute images list --project fedora-cloud --no-standard-images

FreeBSD

FreeBSD is a free operating system maintained by the FreeBSD project. FreeBSD images are available in the freebsd-org-cloud-dev project. To list FreeBSD images, use the following gcloud command:

gcloud compute images list --project freebsd-org-cloud-dev --no-standard-images

openSUSE

openSUSE is a free Linux-based operating system sponsored by SUSE. openSUSE images are available in the opensuse-cloud project. To list openSUSE images, use the following gcloud command:

gcloud compute images list --project opensuse-cloud --no-standard-images

HPC images

The following images are available for creating VMs that are optimized to run high performance computing (HPC) workloads on Compute Engine:

For CentOS 7:

• Image family: hpc-centos-7, Image project: cloud-hpc-image-public

For Rocky Linux 8:

• Image family: hpc-rocky-linux-8, Image project: cloud-hpc-image-public

For information about using this image, see Creating an HPC-ready VM instance.

What's next

• Read Image management best practices.
• Learn about Support and maintenance policy for OS images.
• Create and start an instance.
• Read about Compute Engine instances.
• Create a custom image.
• Build an image from scratch.

Try it for yourself

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