Release Notes

Archived release notes

June 25, 2014

Persistent disks

SSD persistent disks are now available in General Availability and open to all users and projects. For detailed information about SSD persistent disks, see Types of persistent disks. For pricing information, see the price sheet.

June 09, 2014

Images & kernels

Released new images sles-11-sp3-v20140609 to address the OpenSSL security bulletin (CVE-2014-0224) for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

June 05, 2014

Images & kernels

Released new images v20140605 to address the OpenSSL security bulletin (CVE-2014-0224). New images include:

• debian-7-wheezy-v20140605
• backports-debian-7-wheezy-v20140605
• centos-6-v20140605
• rhel-6-v20140605

June 04, 2014

Persistent disks

Released new SSD persistent disks in Limited Preview. SSD persistent disks are also charged at a different rate than standard persistent disks.

Projects

Added new Usage Export feature that lets you export daily and monthly rollup reports about your project's detailed Compute Engine usage.

May 27, 2014

Machine types

16 core machine types are now in General Availability. For pricing, review the price sheet.

May 13, 2014

API

Added new field to Image resources, named diskSizeGb, which shows the size of the image when it is restored to a persistent disk, in GB.

May 05, 2014

Networking

• Updated default firewall rule names. Default firewall rules are automatically created with every project. These rules were previously named default-internal and default-ssh. New projects will have the same default firewalls but with the following new names:

  • default-allow-internal - Allows network connections of any protocol and port between any two instances.
  • default-allow-ssh - Allows TCP connections from any source to any instance on the network, over port 22.

• Introduced new default firewall rule that will be created with each new project.

  • default-allow-icmp - Allows ICMP traffic from any source to any instance on the network.

April 17, 2014

API

Updated default Compute Engine API rate limit from 50,000 requests/day to 250,000 requests/day. See API rate limits for more information.

Metadata server

Introduced new Metadata-Flavor: Google header to replace the X-Google-Metadata-Request: True header. This also allows users to easily detect if they are running in Compute Engine by querying for the new header. For more information, see Metadata Server.

April 14, 2014

Zones

Introduced an Asia Pacific region (asia-east1) and two new supported zones, asia-east1-a and asia-east1-b.

April 09, 2014

Images & kernels

Released new images v20140408 to address the OpenSSL security bulletin (CVE-2014-0160). New images include:

• debian-7-wheezy-v20140408
• backports-debian-7-wheezy-v20140408
• centos-6-v20140408
• rhel-6-v20140408

April 07, 2014

Images & kernels

• RHEL images have moved to General Availability status and are open to all users and projects.

  Note that there is an additional fee for using premium operating systems, including RHEL. Please review the price sheet for more information.

• Added new Red Hat Cloud Access feature, which allows users to use their RHEL licenses on Compute Engine virtual machine instances.

API

Removed support for v1beta16. Please transition to using v1 if you haven't already.

April 02, 2014

gcutil

Release 1.15.0

New feature: Added feature where gcutil prompts the user to set an initial Windows password in the addinstance command if the source image is from a Google Windows project.

March 25, 2014

Introduced sustained use discounts

Sustained use discounts lowers the effective price of your instances as your usage goes up. When you use a virtual machine for an entire month, this amounts to an additional 30% discount. For more information, see the price sheet.

Sustained use discounts are effective starting April 1st, 2014.

Images & kernels

• Windows Server images are now available in limited preview.

  Although we do not currently charge for use, you can review the price sheet for the intended Windows Server image pricing.

• SUSE images are now generally available and is available for all users.

  Note that Compute Engine will start charging for SUSE images on April 1st, 2014. See the price sheet for more information.

Replica pool

Introduced new Replica Pool service, which allows you to create a managed pool of virtual machines based on a reusable template. For more information, see the Replica Pool documentation, or the Replica Pool API reference.

March 19, 2014

Images & kernels

• RHEL images are now in open preview with a new image version, v20140318.

  RHEL images are available to all users at no extra cost until April 1, 2014. On April 1, 2014, Compute Engine will start charging for use of these images according to the price sheet.

• Released new Debian, CentOS, and Debian Backports images, v20140318.

  • For Debian images, network time protocol (NTP) is now configured to use Google services instead of the public NTP pool.

• Updated image packages

  • Google Daemon now syncs ssh keys immediately instead of on a per-minute intervals.
  • Improved systemd integration.
  • Fixed Google Daemon data corruption bug.
  • Startup scripts are now downloaded with curl instead of wget.
  • Removed harmless warnings.

March 14, 2014

gcutil

Release 1.14.2

Bug fix: Fixed issue where performing gcutil moveinstances with instances with disks whose autoDelete status is set to true would lead to loss of user data. gcutil moveinstances is now compatible with Compute Engine API v1 only.

March 10, 2014

Instances

Temporarily disabled support for Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX).

Compute Engine has disabled support for AVX due to a stability issue that we are actively investigating. We will re-enable AVX support as soon as we find and fix the root cause.

March 06, 2014

Images & kernels

SUSE images are now in open preview.

This means that SUSE images are available to all users at no extra cost until April 1, 2014. On April 1, 2014, Compute Engine will start charging for use of these images according to the price sheet.

March 05, 2014

API

Added ability for creating and deleting a root persistent disk when a virtual machine instance is created or deleted. See the Instances documentation for more information.

Persistent disks

• Added support for restoring persistent disk snapshots to a persistent disk of a user-specified size.

  It is now possible to use the sizeGb parameter when restoring a snapshot. This can be used to create a persistent disk that is larger than the persistent disk snapshot. See Restoring snapshots to a Larger Size for more information.

• Added support for setting the auto-delete state of a read-write persistent disk.

gcutil

Release 1.14.0

New features:

• Switched to new, single API call for creating a virtual machine instance with a root persistent disk.
• Added new command, setinstancediskautodelete, that sets the auto-delete option for persistent disks attached to virtual machine instances.
• Added support for specifying a disk size when creating a disk using a snapshot.
• Decreased the time spent waiting for SSH keys to propagate during initial instance creation from 120 seconds to 10 seconds.

February 20, 2014

Instances

Added support for Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) in new virtual machine instances.

All virtual machine instances created after February 11, 2014 have this feature enabled. To check if your virtual machine instance has this enabled, run the following command in your virtual machine instance:

me@my-inst:~$ $ cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep avx
<output should contain 'avx', 'xsave', and 'xsaveopt'>>

If you need to update your instance to use AVX, you must delete and recreate the instance.

December 17, 2013

Networking

Released new Protocol Forwarding feature

Protocol forwarding allows you to forward traffic to a single virtual machine instance, using a target instance. Protocol forwarding provides support for these additional features:

• Added support for new protocols:

  • AH: IP Authentication Header protocol.
  • ESP: IP Encapsulating Security Payload protocol.
  • SCTP: Stream Control Transmission protocol.

• Added support for new Target Instance resources, which allows for non-NAT'ed traffic to be forwarded to a single virtual machine instance.

See Protocol forwarding for more information.

December 03, 2013

Google Compute Engine is now generally available!

Users can now feel confident using Compute Engine to support mission-critical workloads with 24/7 support and a 99.95% monthly SLA. The move to general availability also comes with a host of new features and changes, detailed below. For a full list, review our transition guide.

API

Released new v1 API

v1beta16 is now deprecated and customers should switch to v1. v1beta16 will remain available until March 04, 2014 and v1beta15 will be discontinued on January 03, 2014. For the full details, read our transition guide.

Changes in v1 include (but are not limited to):

• New support for custom kernels and removed support for Google-provided kernels

  Users can now use custom kernels with their images and no longer need to use Google-built kernels. The Kernels collection has been removed from v1 and all new images will include embedded kernel binaries as part of the image.

• Removed scratch boot disks from v1.

  All scratch boot disks have been deprecated and we recommend transitioning to using persistent disks. In the v1 API, it is not possible to create a scratch boot disk.

• Deprecated *-d machine types.

  All *-d machine types have been deprecated and no longer supported. Although you can still create instances with these machine types, we do not recommend this and will eventually remove these machine types completely.

Machine types

New machine types: We've added new 16-core-machine types that are now available for your instances. For more information, review machine types and pricing.

Persistent disks

We've introduced a new persistent disk model. Persistent disk performance now scales linearly with the size of the disk. Additionally, we are removing I/O charges for persistent disks completely and lowering the price of persistent disk storage. For more information, review the pricing documentation.

Metadata server

Release new metadata server version v1

The following are new changes with the v1 metadata server:

• Requests to the metadata server will now require a security header.

  All requests to the metadata server will require the following header:

  X-Google-Metadata-Requests: True
  

• Requests containing the header X-Forwarded-For will automatically be rejected.

gcutil

Release 1.12.0

• New features

  • Added awareness of deprecated machine types to listmachinetypes and the machine type prompt when creating instances.
  • Made --persistent_boot_disk the default setting for the addinstance subcommand since scratch disks were removed from the v1 API. The --nopersistent_boot_disk flag can only be specified using the v1beta16 API.
  • Deprecated all kernel-related subcommands and flags when using the v1 API.

• Other Changes

  • Updated gcutil to be distributed with the Cloud SDK.
  • Raised the default size of persistent disks to 500GB.
  • Made v1 the default API version.

Images & kernels

As part of the Google Compute Engine move to using full disk operation system images, we have made the following changes:

• Released new backports-debian-wheezy image, which allows users to access new features and bug fixes from the backports kernel. See Using backport images for more information.
• Deprecated Kernels collection.
• Remove all support for kernels from the v1 API.

Additionally, FreeBSD, SELinux, and CoreOS images now known to be functional on Compute Engine instances with the move to full disk operation system images.

New premium operating systems limited preview program

The new premium OS limited preview program lets you use a SUSE or Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) images built explicitly for Compute Engine instances. Users who are interested in the program can review the documentation and sign up for the program on the Premium OS page.

November 25, 2013

Images & kernels

• Released new Debian 7 and CentOS 6 images, v20131120.

  • New images now contain embedded kernels rather than Google-built kernels. For instructions on how to upgrade you persistent disk to use an embedded kernel, review the documentation. Similarly, you can also upgrade your custom image to use an embedded kernel.
  • New images allow you to use dmidecode to determine if you are running on Google Compute Engine. See the documentation for more information.

• Deprecated the Kernel resource.

  • Google will no longer provide custom kernels and will instead use community-provided kernels in Google-provided images.

November 12, 2013

Instance migration and transparent scheduled maintenance

Google Compute Engine now offers transparent scheduled maintenance in us-central1-a and us-central1-b; these zones will no longer go offline for scheduled maintenance and Google Compute Engine will automatically move your instances out of the way of any scheduled maintenance activity. For more information, see maintenance events.

gcutil

Release 1.11.0

• New features

  • Added a new subcommand, gcutil whoami, that prints out the email of the currently-authenticated user to standard out.
  • Added two new scope aliases: datastore and userinfo-email.
  • Added flags to gcutil addinstance and a new subcommand, gcutil setscheduling, for controlling instance scheduling parameters.

• Other changes

  • Disabled host key checking for commands that rely on ssh because there is no secure channel to pass the host key to the client for the first time.

Images & kernels

• Marked all Debian 6 images as deprecated.
• Marked Debian 7 images older than debian-7-wheezy-v20130926 as deprecated.

October 22, 2013

Regions & zones

Deprecated us-central2-a zone. us-central2-a has been deprecated and will be permanently turned down by December 31st, 2013. You should move all resources to us-central1-a and/or us-central1-b (after November 11, 2013) and ensure that you are no longer using any resources in us-central2-a after December 31st, 2013.

October 10, 2013

Images & kernels

Added new kernel, gce-no-conn-track-v20130813, and images v20130926.

• gce-no-conn-track-v20120813 kernel is identical to gce-v20130813 kernel except that connection tracking is no longer enabled.
• Images v20130926 will use the new gce-no-conn-track kernel. To use a kernel with connection tracking turned on, specify the --kernel flag with a previous kernel version, such as gce-v20130813.

October 07, 2013

Maintenance windows

Reduce duration of two upcoming maintenance windows for us-central1-a and us-central1-b zones. The new maintenance window durations are as follows:

• us-central2-a: Oct 12, 2013 12:00:00 PM - Oct 22, 2013 10:00:00 AM
• us-central1-b: Nov 2, 2013 12:00:00 PM - Nov 10, 2013 12:00:00 PM

gcutil

Release 1.9.1

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug in which the tilde in the authentication file path was not being expanded properly.

October 3rd, 2013

Networking

Added new features to load balancing:

• New sessionAffinity feature allows users to determine the hashing method used to select backend machines that receive traffic.
• New backupPools and failoverRatio feature allows users to specify a backup target pool, in case a primary target pool becomes unhealthy.

API

Released new API version v1beta16

v1beta15 is now deprecated and customers should switch to v1beta16. v1beta15 will remain available until January 03, 2014. For more information on how to transition to v1beta16, see our transition guide.

Changes in v1beta16 include:

• Removed zone quotas.
• Added new regional quotas.
• Updated the global default quotas with new default limits.
• Changed addresses().user field from a string to a list and renamed the field to addresses().users.
• Added new setBackup method to set backup target pools for existing primary target pools.
• Updated TargetPools resource representation to describe backup pools, failover ratios, and session affinity.

gcutil

Release 1.9.0

• New features

  • Added gcutil settargetpoolbackup command.
  • Added new --backup_pool and --failover_ratio flags for the gcutil addtargetpool command.

• Other

  • Removed usage field from gcutil getzone response.
  • Added new usage field to gcutil getregion response.
  • gcutil now outputs tables thats respect the terminal width. This feature can be turned off using the --respect_terminal_width flag.
  • gcutil deleteinstance with the --force flag now requests users to explicitly provide --[no]delete_boot_pd if any of the instances have a boot disk.

Projects

Stopped allowing cross-project resource references, such as the ability to create a disk from a snapshot in another project. Previously, it was allowed for projects whose access control lists (ACLs) allowed it, such as situations where multiple projects were owned by one user.

September 10, 2013

gcutil

Release 1.8.4

• Bug fixes

  • Fixed an issue whereby reserved IP addresses were not preserved in the gcutil moveinstances subcommand.
  • Bug fixed where global flags were not being displayed on gcutil --help.

• Other

• Updated gcutil help text.

September 05, 2013

Images & kernels

Added new Debian images v20130816.

• Updated images to use latest kernel.
• Updated images to use latest gcutil too.

September 04, 2013

API

Removed support for v1beta14. Please transition to using v1beta15 if you haven't already.

(Updated 09/09/2013) Removed support for cross-region external IP address assignment.

August 26, 2013

Persistent disks

Added support for differential snapshots.

Networking

Added information on how to send email using SendGrid.

Images & kernels

• Added new CentOS image v20130813 with the following updates:

• Updated image to use the latest kernel.

• Updated image to use the latest gcutil tool.

• Added new kernels v20130813 with the following updates:

  • Added multiqueue support.
  • Fixed an issue in scheduler that impacted Hadoop.
  • Added backport pvclock enlightment for softlockup detector.

August 6th, 2013

Networking

Launched new load balancing service

Google Compute Engine has launched a load balancing feature that lets you distribute traffic across your instances. Load balancing is especially useful for supporting heavy traffic to your instances and to provide redundancy to avoid failures.

For more information, visit the load balancing documentation. Additionally, you can review the load balancing reference documentation.

gcutil

Release 1.8.3

New features:

• Added new prompt to select a persistent or scratch boot disk when using gcutil addinstance.

• Changed naming of persistent boot disks that are created during instance creation from boot-<instance-name> to <instance-name>.

• Added prompt to delete attached persistent disk when using gcutil deleteinstance.
• Added support for load balancing.

Images & kernels

• Added source code for custom tools that Google Compute Engine images uses, onto GitHub. The list of tools include:

  • Image Bundle - Creates an image file our of a disk attached to a virtual machine instance.
  • Google Startup Scripts - Scripts and configuration files that set up a Linux-based image to work smoothly with Google Compute Engine.
  • Google Daemon - A service that manages user accounts, maintains SSH login keys, and syncs public endpoint IP addresses.

• Added new Debian and CentOS images v20130723, with the following updates:

  • Added latest gsutil version which addresses issues where gsutil was not working properly.
  • Fixed typo which causes erroneous startup-script-url error.

July 15th, 2013

Kernels

• Marked kernels older than gce-v20130603 as DEPRECATED.
• Marked deprecated kernels gce-v20120912 and older as OBSOLETE.

For a list of kernels and their deprecation states, run the following command:

$ gcutil --project=<project-id> listkernels

June 26th, 2013

Machine types

Added bursting for f1-micro instances. See machine types for more information.

API

Added ability to reset an instance through the API. Review the documentation for resetting instances for more information, or review the instances().reset reference documentation.

gcutil

Release 1.8.2

• New features

  • Added new gcutil resetinstance command that allows resetting virtual machine instances.

• Bug fixes

  • Fixed region detection when releasing addresses from multiple regions.
  • Fixed aggregated resource listing with --format=names.

• Other changes

• Fixed the usage help string for gcutil addroute command.

June 19th, 2013

Images & kernels

• Added new Debian images v20130617.

• Added the following updates for Debian 6 and 7 images v20130617:

  • Updated gsutil to 3.31 and gcutil to 1.8.1.
  • Disable IPv6 by default via /etc/sysctl.d, for optimal user experience. Google Compute Engine does not currently support IPv6.

• Added the following updates for Debian 7 image v20130617:

  • Upgrade pre-installed packages to Debian 7.1, incorporating security updates and miscellaneous important bug fixes. For more information, see the Debian announcements.

June 18th, 2013

Images & kernels

• Added new images v20130522 and kernels v20130603.
• Patched new kernel version gcg-3.3.8-201305211623 and gcg-3.3.8-201305291443 to address vulnerability in previous kernels. See Security Bulletins for more information.
• Fixed kernel warning printed on boot about virtio net multiqueue.
• Made ext4 kernel fixes (for xfstest).

May 21st, 2013

Disks

Increased default per-project total disk quota to 1TB.

gcutil

• Updated documentation for gcutil moveinstances to provide a warning of possible failures during the moving process.
• Improved error detection in the gcutil moveinstances command.
• Fixed behavior where gcutil attempted to use existing persistent disk when recreating an instance with the same name and the --persistent_boot_disk flag.
• Machine type prompts in gcutil now provides a description of the machine types and gcutil listimages will now only display the name and description of images.

May 15th, 2013

Google Compute Engine is available for open signups!

We're excited to announce that Google Compute Engine is now available for open signups and anyone can sign up for the service. For signup instructions, see the signup page.

API

Released new API version v1beta15

v1beta14 is now deprecated and customers should switch to v1beta15. v1beta14 will remain available until August 15, 2013 and v1beta13 will be discontinued on May 31, 2013.

Changes in v1beta15 include:

• Introduced new region scope and regional resources.

  • Added new regional resource URIs to access regional resources, in the form:

        https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1beta15/project/<project-id>/regions/<region-name>/<resource-type>/<resource-name>
    

    For example, to access regional reserved IPs, use the following regional URI:

        https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1beta15/project/example.com:myproject/regions/example-region/addresses
    

  • Updated reserved IP addresses to a regional resource.

    External static IPs are now referred to as reserved IP addresses and are no longer a global resource. Reserved IPs are now a regional resource that can be managed through the Addresses collection.

    You can also provision, promote, and release external IP addresses through the Addresses collection, without having to manually request one. For more information, see the Reserved Addresses documentation.

• Converted machine type resources to per-zone resources.

  To use a machine type, you must now specify the zone in which that machine type lives:

  https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1beta15/project/example.com:myproject/zone/example-zone/machineTypes/machineTypeName
  

• Changed method of creating Snapshot resources to use a custom verb on the Disk resource.

  To create a Snapshot resource, you must now make a request to the following URI:

  https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1beta15/projects//zones//disks//createSnapshot

  Snapshots are still accessible by making requests to the Snapshot collection.

• Removed ability to assign an internal IP address.

  The internalIp field on a virtual machine instance is now read-only and you can no longer manually assign internal IPs to your instances. Google Compute Engine will assign internal IPs automatically.

• Added a number of new features.

  • Added new Routes collection that lets you set up and manage a virtual machine's routing table.
  • Added ability to reserve and release static IPs, and to promote ephemeral IPs to static IPs.

  • Added the ability to request aggregate lists for per-zone and per-region resources. You can request aggregate lists for the following resources:

    • Instance resources
    • Disk resources
    • Address resources
    • Machine type resources

  For example, you can list instances across all zones by making a request to the following URI:

  https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1beta15/project/example.com:myproject/aggregated/instances
  

Machine types

• Introduced new shared-core machine types.

  Shared-core machine types are more cost-effective for running applications that don't require a lot of resources. New available machine types are g1-small and f1-micro.

• Updated maximum total persistent disk size that can be attached to a machine type.

  Standard, high memory, and high CPU machine types now have an updated maximum total disk size of 10 TB. See machine types for more information.

Billing

Updated billing model for instances.

Google Compute Engine has updated our billing model so that instances are billed based on per-minute usage. All instances that run for 10 minutes or less will be charged for 10 minutes of usage. After the first 10 minutes, usage is charged on a per-minute basis.

Images

• Added new images and kernels v20130515.
• Removed Google-specific repositories from images. The only packaged repositories configured in images are now the Debian archive. Google Compute Engine still installs Google-specific packages at build time but removed Google- specific repositories for various reasons.
• Removed default installation of the apiclient library.
• Changed log location of startup script output to /var/log/startupscript.log. Also, added startup script log output to the instance's serial port console so you can also run gcutil getserialportoutput to retrieve startup script log information.
• Improved instance creation and deletion time for Debian.
• Fixed issue preventing startup script specified in metadata to be downloaded from Google Cloud Storage.
• Removed dist-upgrade from starting on instance boot.
• Removed google_storage_download script.

gcutil

Release 1.8.0

• New features

  • Added support for v1beta15 Google Compute Engine API. (addresses, regions, per-zone machine types, aggregated lists).
  • Added gcutil config command, an alias for gcutil auth.
  • When prompting the user to select an image, gcutil will include standard images (CentOS, Debian).
  • With v1beta15 API, gcutil will use aggregated list API call by default. Aggregated list method will aggregate all resources across all scopes in which the resource of that type exist (for example, aggregated list of instances will list instances in all zones).
  • Users can specify image from the standard project by specifying image name prefix. For example: gcutil addinstance my-instance --image=debian-7.

• Bug fixes

  • When moving instances using gcutil moveinstances, if some of the instances depend on deprecated resources (image, kernel), gcutil will warn before it proceeds with the migration (migration would fail). New flag --replace_deprecated will create instances in the destination zone with dependencies on deprecated resources updated to recommended replacement resources.

• Other changes

  • List commands will display all resources by default. Number of resources listed may be limited using --max_results flag. --fetch_all_pages flag is now deprecated.
  • Improved display of images and kernels list. By default, only newest kernels/images will be displayed when listed or when user is prompted to select an image or kernel. Use --old_images or --old_kernels to list all images or kernels, respectively.
  • When listing imges, the standard images (CentOS, Debian) will be listed in addition to images from the specified project. To list images in the specified project only, use --nostandard_images flag.
  • When prompting user to select a machine type, gcutil displays machine type description in addition to the name.
  • Removed support for v1beta13 Google Compute Engine API.

gcelib

gcelib is no longer available and if you haven't already, we strongly encourage users to transition to the Google APIs Python Client Library.

May 7th, 2013

Images

Released new Debian images

Google Compute Engine is happy to announce that Debian images for Google Compute Engine are now available for your instances. To view a list of Debian images available to your project, run the following gcutil command:

$ gcutil --project=debian-cloud listimages

For information about Debian images, see the Debian wiki.

Similarly, you can see a list of CentOS images like so:

$ gcutil --project=centos-cloud listimages

Deprecated gcel images

gcel images are now deprecated and we encourage users to transition to either Debian or CentOS images.

April 4th, 2013

Google Compute Engine available for Gold signups!

We're excited to announce that Google Compute Engine is now available for users who sign up for Gold Support for the Google Cloud Platform! Visit the signup page to get started.

Google Compute Engine console

New features:

• Added new feature to attach a persistent disk to a running instance.
• Added new feature to start an instance using a root persistent disk.
• Migrated the ability to view REST details of a request to Google Developers Console.

March 29th, 2013

Metadata server

Changed service account token cache period

The metadata server no longer caches service account tokens within 5 minutes of their expiration window. If you need to ensure you always have a valid access token, you can fetch one anytime within 5 minutes of the expiration window.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug where operations created using v1beta13 could not be retrieved using v1beta14.
• Fixed a bug where attaching persistent disks with device names may collide with scratch disks.

March 8th, 2013

Metadata server

Released new metadata server version v1beta1

See the transition guide to help transition your code away from the previous metadata version. v1beta1 changes include:

• New metadata server URL: http://metadata/computeMetadata/v1beta1/
• New metadata tree structure where metadata now live under a project/ or instance/ directory.

• New URL query parameters

  • wait_for_change: Perform a hanging GET request that returns when the value of the specified metadata key changes
  • recursive: retrieve all content from underneath a directory
  • alt: specify the format of the response

• Updated or added new default metadata keys.

Disks

Added new feature for attaching and detaching persistent disks to a running instance and new API documentation for attachDisk and detachDisk methods.

Images & kernels

• Added new images and kernels v20130225.
• Patched kernels 3.3x to address security vulnerability in kernels 2.6x.
• Released new security bulletins page that lists known security issues and their associated fixes.
• Removed /dev/<em>&lt;disk&gt;</em> paths; users should be referencing their disks using the /dev/disk/by-id/aliases.

gcutil

Release 1.7.2

• New features

• Added two new commands attachDisk and detachDisk, which can be used to attach/detach a persistent disk to and from running virtual machine instance.

• Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue where list operations were incorrectly capped at maximum number of results of 100.

• Other changes

• Improved display of project's IP addresses in gcutil getproject.

• Deprecation information is now printed for deprecated resources.
• Removed support for v1beta12 Google Compute Engine API.

February 19th, 2013

gcelib

gcelib is now deprecated

Downloads and documentation of gcelib will continue to be available for three months, until May 15, 2013. During that time, gcelib will work with the v1beta13 API only (it won’t be upgraded to work with v1beta14). Between now and May 15, developers using gcelib are strongly encouraged to migrate their applications to use an alternative client library, such as the Google APIs Python Client Library.

Disks

Enabled billing for persistent disk snapshots

For more information on snapshot pricing, see the price sheet.

February 8th, 2013

gcutil

Release 1.7.0

• New features

  • Added a new subcommand, gcutil moveinstances, for moving instances (and their persistent disks) from one zone to another.

• Bug fixes

  • Added --zone flag to gcutil listdisks.
  • Fixed a bug where gcutil addsnapshot would crash if the --zone flag was not specified.

• Other changes

  • Added zone column to the table output of gcutil listoperations.
  • Increased the timeout of synchronous operations from 2 minutes to 4 minutes.

January 30th, 2013

API

Released new API version v1beta14

v1beta13 is now deprecated and customers should switch to v1beta14. v1beta13 will remain available until April 30, 2013, and v1beta12 will be discontinued February 11, 2013.

Changes in v1beta14 include:

• Introduced per-zone and global resources

  • Added new per-zone resource URIs to access per-zone resources, in the form:

        https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1beta14/projects/<project-id>/zones/<zone>/<resource-type>/<resource-name>
    

    For example, accessing a Disk resource requires the following per-zone URI:

        https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1beta14/project/example.com:myproject/zones/some-example-zone/disks/mydisk
    

• Added new global resource URIs for accessing global resources, in the form:

  https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1beta14/projects/<project-id>/<resource-type>/<resource-name>
  

  For example, accessing a Machine Type resource requires the following global URI:

  https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1beta14/project/example.com:myproject/global/machineTypes/somemachinetype
  

• Added a number of new features

  • Added new setTags method which allows you to update instance tags for a running instances.
  • Added new setMetadata method which allows you to update metadata for a running instance.
  • Added new deprecate method which allows you to set the deprecation status for an image.
  • Added new root from Persistent Disk feature which allows you to store an operating system image on a persistent disk so that it persists through the life of the instance. Multiple instances can also attach to a root persistent disk in read-only mode.

• Updated existing resource properties

  • Removed kind property from instance.networkInterfaces and instance.serviceAccounts.
  • Removed support for using default images and default kernels when creating an instance or an image through the API. Users must now explicitly specify an image or kernel.
  • Added new deprecate status to resources.

• Updated response codes

  • Changed error response for inserting an existing instance from HTTP 400 to HTTP 409.
  • Changed server response for accepting an asynchronous request from HTTP 200 to HTTP 202.

gcutil

Release 1.6.0

• New features

  • Added support for v1beta14 per-zone resources.
  • Added a new subcommand, gcutil setinstancemetadata, for updating instance metadata.
  • Added a new subcommand, gcutil setinstancetags, for updating and setting instance tags.
  • Added a new subcommand, gcutil deprecateimage, for setting the deprecated field on an image resource.

  • Added support for specifying a root persistent disk when creating a new instance:

        $ gcutil addinstance my-instance --disk=my-disk,boot
    

• Other changes

  • Changed the ordering of the machine type prompt when creating instances so the standard machine types show up first, followed by the highcpu and highmem machine types.

January 24th, 2013

Images

Added new VM images centos-6-v20130104, gcel-12-04-v20130104, and gcel-10-04-v20130104

• No significant changes.

December 14th, 2012

Disks

New persistent disk snapshot feature

Added Persistent Disk Snapshot feature which allows you to create snapshots of existing persistent disks and apply them to new disks.

API

Other changes

• Added new error message when querying the metadata server for a service account token that has not been authorized for that instance.
• Added new operation types for instance restarts and shutdowns

gcutil

Release 1.5.0

New features

• Added subcommands for interacting with snapshots.

December 6th, 2012

Machine types

• New machine types

  • Added new high memory and high CPU machine types.

    • For instances that require more memory relative to virtual cores, use high memory machine types.
    • For instances that require more virtual cores relative to memory, use high CPU machine types.

  • Added new diskless machine types.

• New machine type pricing

  • Lowered pricing for standard machine types.

Zones

Added new European zones.

• europe-west1-a
• europe-west1-b

November 9th, 2012

gcutil

Release 1.4.1

• New features

  • Added new subcommand, gcutil getserialportoutput, for getting the serial port output from an instance.

• Bug fixes

  • Fixed an issue where gcutil waited for instances that failed to be created.

• Other changes

  • Changed the zone selection feature to display maintenance window information next to the zone names.
  • Changed the display of operation resources to show the user responsible for the operation.

Images

New VM images and kernel for v20121106

• All new images that use a Debian package manager are now named gcel-<version>. Current images ubuntu-12-04-vYYYYMMDD and ubuntu-10-04-vYYYYMMDD are deprecated and will remain available until Feb. 9th, 2013.
• Updated /etc/lsb-release file to reflect new distribution information.
• Added support for SCSI disk interface; for information on how to convert your instances, see Disks Interfaces.

Google Compute Engine Console

Added ability to clone instances

• It is now possible to clone an instance by visiting the instance's details page and clicking the Clone button.

October 11th, 2012

API

Released new API Version v1beta13

v1beta12 is now deprecated and customers should switch to v1beta13. V1Beta12 will remain available until January 11, 2013. Changes in v1beta13 include:

• Removed hostCpus field from the machineType resource

• Changed API nouns and verbs to use camelCase, specifically:

  • machine-types is now machineTypes
  • add-access-config and delete-access-config is now addAccessConfig and deleteAccessConfig
  • set-common-instance-metadata is now setCommonInstanceMetadata

• Made setCommonInstanceMetadata an asynchronous operation, returning an operation resource to track completion of the request

• Add serial port output API
• Fix metadata key validation and prevent duplicate metadata keys
• PENDING and RUNNING states of long-running operations now reflect the full lifetime of the request
• Delete operations now guarantee that the DONE state is not reached until after the resource has been completely torn down

To update your application code to v1beta13:

1. Change all URIs from v1beta12 to v1beta13. For example:

https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1beta13/disks

1. Update API nouns and verbs that have a dash to use camelCase (e.g. machineTypes instead of machine-types)

2. Update your application code to reflect the following changes, if necessary:

   • setCommonInstanceMetadata now returns an Operations resource

   • New metadata keys must match the regex [a-zA-Z0-9-_]{1,128} and be less than 128 bytes in length. Metadata values cannot be longer than 32768 bytes

   • Operations can take longer to complete as they now reflect the total time it takes to roll out and confirm the request

   • Delete operations only return DONE after the resource has been completely torn down
   • Instances have new additional STOPPING state, which means that the instance is currently in process of being stopped

gcutil

Release 1.3.4

• New features

  • Implemented batch adddisk. It is now possible to add multiple disks with a single call to gcutil adddisk.
  • Implemented batch delete operations for additional resources. It is now possible to delete multiple disks, firewalls, images, instances, networks, operations, and snapshots.

  • Added a --format flag for the list subcommands. The flag accepts the following values: table, sparse, json, csv, and names. --format=names allows gcutil to be used with Unix tool pipelines:

    $ gcutil listinstances --format=names | xargs gcutil deleteinstance --force
    

• Bug fixes

  • Fixed the sorting in list subcommands. Instead of sorting each page individually, gcutil now sorts all results before displaying them to the user.
  • Changed --cache_flag_values to not cache flags when the underlying command fails.

• Other changes

  • Deprecated --project_id in favor of --project. --project_id still works, but will produce a warning.
  • Reconfigured the version checking to take place when gcutil exits.
  • Improved documentation for firewall commands.
  • Changed the headings for list and get subcommands. The new headings use dashes instead of spaces and are in lower-case. This eliminates the need to use quotes with the --sort_by flag and makes the display of the headings more user-friendly.

Google Compute Engine Console

• Added serial console output from a VM instance to the instance details page.
• Added support for attaching persistent disks in read-only mode as well as read-write mode.
• Added new example gcutil commands for adding instances, disks, networks, and firewalls.
• Added support for adding and deleting networks.
• Fixed assorted bugs.

September 18th, 2012

gcutil

Release 1.2.0

• New features

  • Added support for gs:// URLs to the addimage command.
  • Implemented support for multiple flag cache files. gcutil now searches for a .gcutil.flags file starting in the current directory, followed by the parent directories, and the home directory until a file is found.

• Bug fixes

  • Added a check to commands dealing with metadata to warn the user of duplicate metadata keys instead of silently ignoring duplicates.
  • Fixed an issue where listoperations would not fetch multiple pages when encountering an operation that contains an error.

• Other changes

  • Changed the way gcutil is packaged.
  • Made some of the flag descriptions and an error messages more informative.

Images

New Linux VM images v20120912

• Added more aggressive validation for ssh keys.
• make package is now included by default.

September 13th, 2012

API

• Added newline to the end of fstab for images created using the image bundling tool.
• Added a warning when users try to create hostnames that are 33 characters or longer.
• Improved error messaging when a user tries to use an IP address reserved for system purposes.

Google Compute Engine Console

Added ability to add or remove networks using the Console.

September 5th, 2012

API

• Faster asynchronous job completion.
• Improved scalability for resource creation, updates, and monitoring.
• Resource quotas enabled on a per-project basis, for images, firewalls, and networks.
• Enable NAT on ICMP packets.

June 28, 2012

Google Compute Engine is available for limited preview!