Release Notes

This page contains release notes for features and updates to the Compute Engine service.

Latest API version: v1

September 2016

September 19, 2016

September 14, 2016

September 12, 2016

  • Instances with 3 TB of total local SSD space are generally available. You can create instances with eight local SSD devices for a total 3 TB of local SSD storage space. See Local SSD limits for available zones and machine types.

September 08, 2016

  • Added new guestOsFeatures property into Beta, which lets you enable certain guest OS features for your images. For more information, see the documentation for guestOsFeatures.

August 2016

August 16, 2016

  • SQL Server images are now available in Beta. These images include Windows Server with SQL Server preinstalled. The price for SQL Server images includes the licensing cost for SQL Server. This allows you to pay for SQL Server only when you use it with pay as you go billing on a per-minute basis. See the cost for these SQL Server images on the pricing page.

August 12, 2016

  • SSD persistent disks now have improved IOPS performance. Instances with 16 or more cores can achieve 20,000 IOPS, and instances with 32 cores can achieve 25,000 IOPS with SSD persistent disks of a sufficient size. See the persistent disk performance page for details.

August 09, 2016

  • Lowered prices of preemptible virtual machine instances for predefined and custom machine types. To see the new pricing, see the pricing table for machine types.

July 2016

July 21, 2016

July 20, 2016

  • The us-west1 region is now available, and offers Broadwell zones us-west1-a and us-west1-b. See Regions and Zones for more information.

  • Regional managed instance groups are now available in Beta. You can use regional managed instance groups to distribute instances across multiple zones in a region and improve your application availability.

July 1, 2016

  • Shutdown Scripts are now generally available to use with Compute Engine instances. Shutdown scripts allow users to execute commands, on a best-effort basis, right before an instance is terminated or restarted. For more information, see Running Shutdown Scripts.

June 2016

June 29, 2016

  • Protect data on Compute Engine with your own encryption keys. Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys are now generally available for select countries. You can now also stop an instance with a persistent disk that is encrypted with your own key. Compute Engine is able to restart your instance if you provide the key.

June 27, 2016

  • Released a new feature into Beta where you can enable interactive access to the serial console so you can more easily troubleshoot instances that are not booting properly or that are otherwise inaccessible. See Interacting with the Serial Console for more information.

June 20, 2016

  • Fixed a bug with how Compute Engine accounts for and computes the metric used to create CPU usage graphs shown in the Google Cloud Platform Console VM Instances page and Instance Details page. These graphs should now report CPU usage numbers much closer to the CPU usage inside the guest, and should match numbers reported by guest tools like top and uptime.

June 14, 2016

  • The metadata server has been updated so that it only gives a 60 second advance notice before a maintenance event if you have queried for the maintenance-event attribute of that instance at least once since the last migration. Otherwise, Compute Engine assumes that you do not need advance notice of maintenance events and will not provide a notice 60 seconds before an imminent maintenance event. To learn more about the maintenance-event attribute, read the Getting transparent maintenance notices section.

  • You can now specify an instance's internal IP address at instance creation.

June 09, 2016

  • The Debian 7 images and Debian 7 backports images are deprecated. Use the latest Debian 8 public image to create new instances or upgrade your Debian 7 instances to Debian 8. If you still require Debian 7, see the advisory message.

  • CentOS, Debian, and RHEL images version v20160606 or newer now include a new guest environment with the following significant changes:

    • Linux guest software is installed from, and hosted in, a Google Cloud repository, and is updateable with standard package management tools such as apt or yum.
    • Images no longer contain the deprecated gcimagebundle tool. If you need to create image file from a Compute Engine instance, use the instructions for Exporting an Image to Google Cloud Storage.
    • Debian images include unattended-upgrades for security updates. Security updates are installed daily by default.
    • Debian images install Google Cloud SDK from a deb package hosted in a Google Cloud repository. You can update the gcloud tool in Debian using the apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade command instead of the gcloud components update command.
    • Debian images automatically expand root disk partitions up to 2 TB regardless of the boot disk size. Previously, if your disk was over 2 TB, Debian images would not expand the root disk at all.
    • Debian images include a compiled python-crcmod library so that composite objects in Google Cloud Storage work correctly with gsutil.

  • The new Linux guest environment is published on GitHub.

May 2016

May 11, 2016

The following Compute Engine IAM roles are now generally available:

  • roles/compute.networkAdmin
  • roles/compute.securityAdmin
  • roles/iam.serviceAccountActor

For more information, read the IAM documentation.

April 2016

April 28, 2016

  • Images can now be organized into image families for easier management and use. Image families point to the latest version of an operating system image that is not marked as deprecated. Create an instance by specifying an image family with one of the available public images. To organize your own images into image families, create a private image.

April 21, 2016

April 5, 2016

April 4, 2016

  • You can now attach more than 16 unique persistent disks to an instance with a predefined machine type. Total persistent disk space per instance is still limited to 64 TB. The number of disks depends on the number of cores that the instance has. This feature is available in Beta. See disk number limits for details.

April 01, 2016

March 2016

March 30, 2016

  • Resizeable persistent disks are now generally available to all users and projects. You can increase the size of existing persistent disks even while they are attached to running VM instances.
  • Persistent disks larger than 10 TB are generally available. You can now create or resize persistent disks to be up to 64 TB in size. Persistent disks larger than 10 TB can be attached only to specific machine types.

March 24, 2016

March 15, 2016

March 10, 2016

March 7, 2016

  • Updated the way that SSH keys work in project metadata and instance metadata. If you manage SSH keys manually, use the new metadata values.

February 2016

February 23, 2016

  • Added a requirement that account owners who are enabled for user accounts must also be granted permission to act as a service account before they can connect to instances that are enabled for service accounts. Read the documentation for more information.

February 17, 2016

February 16, 2016

February 10, 2016

February 05, 2016

  • OpenSUSE Leap 42 images are now available to all users and projects starting with image opensuse-leap-42-1-v20160202.

January 2016

January 29, 2016

  • You can now attach up to eight local SSD devices to each of your instances for a total of 3 TB of local SSD space per instance. Attaching more than 1.5 TB of local SSD space to a single instance is a Beta feature and is available only in some zones. See Local SSD limits for details.

December 2015

December 17, 2015

  • Persistent disks larger than 10 TB are in Beta. You can now create disks up to 64 TB in size. Persistent disks larger than 10 TB can be attached only to specific machine types.
  • You can resize persistent disks to provide more disk space and throughput to your instances. This feature is now available in Beta.

November 2015

November 18, 2015

November 13, 2015

  • Updated the resource quotas page to reflect that quotas are now listed on the Quotas page in the Cloud Platform Console.

November 12, 2015

October 2015

October 15, 2015

October 09, 2015

October 05, 2015

October 01, 2015

  • Added new us-east1 region. us-east1 contains Haswell zones that are now available to all projects and users. See Regions and Zones for more information.

September 2015

September 30, 2015

  • The User Accounts service is now available in Beta. Updates include:
    • Release of new beta-accounts.. images that have user accounts enabled.
    • Update to quota limits.

September 08, 2015

September 03, 2015

July 2015

July 28, 2015

  • Debian 8 images are now available to all users and projects starting with debian-8-jessie-v20150710.
  • Protect data on Compute Engine with your own encryption keys. The Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys feature is now available in Beta for select countries.

July 15, 2015

  • Updated the User Accounts API to use a new API endpoint:

    https://www.googleapis.com/clouduseraccounts/alpha/...

July 14, 2015

  • Windows images are now generally available to all users and projects. Commands for managing Windows instances are no longer in beta.

July 01, 2015

  • Released new Windows images, 20150629, that supports service account scopes. This removes the restriction that users must make their startup script publicly-accessible for Windows instances.
  • Added new Python and Java script that can programmatically reset a Windows password. See Progammatically generate a username and password for more information.

June 2015

June 29, 2016

June 03, 2015

  • Updated Windows authentication process. Windows images v20150511 and later will use the new scheme by default. gcloud will now generate a random password for Windows login; it is no longer possible to manually set a Windows password through gcloud but you can set a custom password in the instance.

May 2015

May 18, 2015

  • Added preemptible instances that you can create and run at a much lower price than normal instances. For more information about how to use these instances in your Compute Engine project, see the preemptible instances documentation.
  • Lowered the price of all machine types in all locations. For more information, see the price sheet.

May 13, 2015

  • Removed support for running sysprep-oobe-script-* startup scripts on Windows virtual machines. We recommend using windows-startup-script-* keys as replacements. For more information, see Startup scripts.

May 08, 2015

  • Added documentation for configuring network time protocol (NTP) on virtual machine instances. Make sure you adjust your NTP settings before the upcoming leap second on June 30th, 2015**.

May 04, 2015

April 2015

April 30, 2015

  • Added new User Accounts feature, available in Alpha. User accounts allow you to create Linux user accounts for your virtual machines.

April 29, 2015

  • Released instance stop() and start() features into General Availability. Additionally, stopped instances no longer count towards your CPU resource quotas. See Stopping an instance and Restarting a stopped instance for more information.
  • Upgraded us-central1-b to use Haswell processors. All new virtual machines started in us-central1-b will use Haswell processors by default. Existing instances in us-central1-b have been upgraded from Sandy Bridge to Haswell processors. See Zones and Machine Types for a full list of available zones and processors.

April 27, 2015

April 23, 2015

March 2015

March 30, 2015

March 25, 2015

March 19, 2015

March 13, 2015

March 12, 2015

  • Added new us-central1-c zone. us-central1-c zone is a Haswell zone that is now available to all projects and users. For more information, see Zones.
  • Released new Activity Logs feature in Beta as part of the Cloud Logging service.

March 11, 2015

  • Added new 32-core machine types in Beta. For more information and pricing, see Machine Types and Pricing.

March 05, 2015

February 2015

February 20, 2015

  • Removed the limit on number of API requests per day for all projects. See API rate limits for more information.

February 19, 2015

  • Added new europe-west1-d zone. europe-west1-d zone is a Haswell zone that is now available to all projects and users. Currently, europe-west1-d zone offers 2.3 GHz Intel Xeon E5 v3 Haswell processors. For more information, see Zones and Machine Types.

February 05, 2015

  • Released new Debian 7 images v20150127 which performs automatic resizing of root persistent disks up to 2 TB. For more information, see Repartition a root persistent disk.

February 04, 2015

January 2015

January 20, 2015

  • Local SSDs are now in General Availability and can be used by all projects and users.

January 13, 2015

Note: Currently, virtual machines with local SSDs cannot be restarted but we expect to add this functionality in the future. Additionally, during Beta, stopped virtual machines count toward your available CPU quota but we will remove this restriction before this feature is generally available.

December 2014

December 23, 2014

December 17, 2014

  • Ubuntu images are now in General Availability.

December 10, 2014

  • Added new Windows images alias to gcloud compute. You can now specify the latest version of the Windows image by providing the following flag with your instance or disk creation request:

    --image windows-2008-r2

    For more information, see Starting a new Windows virtual machine instance.

December 08, 2014

December 02, 2014

  • Added support for local SSD in all zones, *exceptus-central1-b and europe-west1-a (which is deprecated).

November 2014

November 19, 2014

  • gcloud version 0.9.37 and higher now has support for local SSD flags without an additional repository download. Additionally, the command-line flags have changed for creating local SSDs. For more information, see Local SSD.
  • Added support for shutdown scripts in Ubuntu images.

November 13, 2014

  • Released new shutdown script feature in Beta for image versions v20141007 and newer. Shutdown scripts allow users to execute commands, on a best-effort basis, right before an instance is terminated or restarted. For more information, see Shutdown scripts.

November 04, 2014

  • Lowered pricing for persistent SSD and persistent disk snapshots. See Persistent disk pricing for more information.
  • Lowered network pricing. See Network pricing for more information.
  • Autoscaler is now available in Beta and available to all users and projects. See Autoscaler for more information.

November 03, 2014

October 2014

October 29, 2014

  • Added new europe-west1-c zone. europe-west1-c zone is an Ivy Bridge zone that is now available to all projects and users. See Zones for more information.
  • Released new local SSDs in Beta phase. This is now available to all users and projects. See Local SSD for more information.

October 15, 2014

  • Deprecated europe-west1-a zone. europe-west1-a has been deprecated and will be permanently turned down on March 29th, 2015. You should move all resources to europe-west1-b and ensure that you are no longer using any resources in europe-west1-a after March 29th, 2015.

    We expect that an additional zone, europe-west1-c will be available in two weeks, on October 31st, 2014.

    For instructions on how to move your instances, see Moving an instance between zones.

October 06, 2014

  • Released new RHEL 7 image, rhel-7-v20141001. For more information, see Operating Systems.
  • For RHEL 7 images, updated the firewall configuration so that all traffic is allowed by default, similar to existing CentOS images.

October 01, 2014 + Lowered pricing for all machine types in all locations. For more information, see the price sheet.

September 2014

September 29, 2014

  • Released new images, v20140926, that mitigates additional vulnerabilities in the bash security bug. See Security bulletins for detailed information.

September 19, 2014

  • Added new utilizationTargetType property in the API and new --custom-metric-utilization-target-type CUSTOM_METRIC_UTILIZATION_TARGET_TYPE flag in gcloud compute that specifies how the target value should be measured, either as a GAUGE value or a DELTA_PER_MINUTE value. This property is required if you are specifying a Stackdriver Monitoring metric. For more information, see the Autoscaler documentation.

September 16, 2014

September 04, 2014

August 2014

August 13, 2014

  • Released gcloud compute into General Availability. Major changes from the last Open Preview release are:
    • Added new compute/zone and compute/region properties that can be used to set a default zone and region. To set the properties, run gcloud config set compute/zone ZONE and gcloud config set compute/region REGION.
    • Added support for overriding disk auto-deletion during instance deletion.
    • Updated the output of commands that mutate resources to be more human-friendly. The --format flag can be used for more verbose output.
    • Replaced all get subcommands with describe subcommands (e.g., gcloud compute instances get has been replaced with gcloud compute instances describe).
    • Renamed the firewalls collection to firewall-rules.
    • Added support to the addresses collection for interacting with global addresses.

August 12, 2014

  • The scheduled maintenance for europe-west1-a zone has been cancelled and all zones have now transitioned to using transparent maintenance. This means that virtual machines set to live migrate will no longer be taken offline for maintenance in any zone. For information on transparent maintenance and how to set your virtual machines to live migrate, see the Setting instance scheduling options documentation.

August 04, 2014

  • Added new zone, asia-east1-c, with transparent maintenance support. asia-east1-c is now available to all projects and users. See the Zones and Region documentation for more details.

July 2014

July 22, 2014

  • Released new Windows images windows-server-2008-r2-dc-v20140716 with the following updates:

    • Allows load balancing for Windows virtual machines that are not in a zone marked by a -windows suffix. See the Load Balancing documentation for more information.
    • Fixes a bug where Windows snapshots could not start new instances.

  • Enabled support for Windows virtual machine instances in all zones. Windows instances are no longer limited to Windows-specific zones. For information on starting and using Windows instances, see the Operating Systems documentation. Existing -windows zones will be inaccessible starting August 15th, 2014 and it is recommended that you restart your instance using the newest Windows image in a non-Windows zone before August 15, 2014.

July 10, 2014

  • Added new zone, us-central1-f, with transparent maintenance support. us-central1-f is now available to all projects and users. See the Zones and Region documentation for more details.

June 2014

June 25, 2014

  • 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

June 05, 2014

  • 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

  • Released new SSD persistent disks in Limited Preview. SSD persistent disks are also charged at a different rate than standard persistent disks.
  • Added new Usage Export feature that lets you export daily and monthly rollup reports about your project's detailed Compute Engine usage.

May 2014

May 27, 2014

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

May 13, 2014

  • 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

  • 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 2014

April 17, 2014

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

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

April 09, 2014

  • 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

  • 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.

  • Removed support for v1beta16. Please transition to using [v1](/compute/docs/reference/latest/ if you haven't already.

April 02, 2014

  • gcutil Release 1.15.0
    • 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 2014

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.

  • 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.

  • 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

  • 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

  • Released gcutil 1.14.2.
    • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Released gcutil 1.14.0.

    • 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 2014

February 20, 2014

  • 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:

    $ cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep avx

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

December 2013

December 17, 2013

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.

  • 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,

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Released 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.

  • Released gcutil v1.12.0.

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

  • As part of the Google Compute Engine move to using full disk operating 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.
    • 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.

  • Introduced 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 OS page.

November 2013

November 25, 2013

  • 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

  • Added new instance migration and transparent scheduled maintenance features. 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.

  • Added new gcutil release 1.11.0.

    • 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.
    • 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.

  • Marked all Debian 6 images as deprecated.

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

October 2013

October 22, 2013

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Released gcutil 1.9.1.

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

October 3rd, 2013

  • 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.

  • Released new API version v1beta16. v1beta15 is now deprecated and customers should switch to v1beta16. v1beta15 will remain available until January 03, 2014. 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.

  • Released gcutil 1.9.0.

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

  • 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 2013

September 10, 2013

  • Released gcutil 1.8.4.
    • 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.
    • Updated gcutil help text.

September 05, 2013

  • Added new Debian images v20130816.
    • Updated images to use latest kernel.
    • Updated images to use latest gcutil too.

September 04, 2013

  • Removed support for v1beta14.

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

August 2013

August 26, 2013

  • Added support for differential snapshots.
  • Added information on how to send email using SendGrid.
  • 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

  • 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.

  • Released gcutil 1.8.3

    • 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.

  • 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 2013

July 15th, 2013

  • 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

  • Added bursting for f1-micro instances. See machine types for more information.
  • 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.
  • Released gcutil 1.8.2.
    • Added new gcutil resetinstance command that allows resetting virtual machine instances.
    • Fixed region detection when releasing addresses from multiple regions.
    • Fixed aggregated resource listing with --format=names.
  • Fixed the usage help string for gcutil addroute command.

June 2013

June 19th, 2013

  • 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

  • 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 2013

May 21st, 2013

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

  • 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 URIsto 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/zones/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/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/disks/DISK/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

    • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Released gcutil 1.8.0.

    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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 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

  • 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 2013

April 4th, 2013

March 2013

March 29th, 2013

  • 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.
  • 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

  • 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.google.internal/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.

  • Added new feature for attaching and detaching persistent disks to a running instance and new API documentation for attachDisk and detachDisk methods.
  • 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.
  • Released gcutil 1.7.2.
    • Added two new commands attachDisk and detachDisk, which can be used to attach/detach a persistent disk to and from running virtual machine instance.
    • Fixed an issue where list operations were incorrectly capped at maximum number of results of 100.
    • Improved 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 2013

February 19th, 2013

  • 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.
  • Enabled billing for persistent disk snapshots. For more information on snapshot pricing, see the price sheet.

February 8th, 2013

  • Released gcutil 1.7.0.
    • Added a new subcommand, gcutil moveinstances, for moving instances (and their persistent disks) from one zone to another.
    • Added --zone flag to gcutil listdisks.
    • Fixed a bug where gcutil addsnapshot would crash if the --zone flag was not specified.
    • Added zone column to the table output of gcutil listoperations.
    • Increased the timeout of synchronous operations from 2 minutes to 4 minutes.

January 2013

January 30th, 2013

  • 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 URIsto 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.

  • Released gcutil 1.6.0.

    • 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

    • 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

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

December 2012

December 14th, 2012

  • 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.

Note: Although persistent disk snapshot rates are available on the price sheet, billing for snapshots is not yet enabled. We expect to enable snapshot billing in January 2013.

  • 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
  • Released gcutil 1.5.0.
    • Added subcommands for interacting with snapshots.

December 6th, 2012

November 2012

November 9th, 2012

  • Released gcutil 1.4.1.
    • Added new subcommand, gcutil getserialportoutput, for getting the serial port output from an instance.
    • Fixed an issue where gcutil waited for instances that failed to be created.
    • 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.
  • 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.
  • Added ability to clone instances in the console. It is now possible to clone an instance by visiting the instance's details page and clicking the Clone button.

October 2012

October 11th, 2012

  • Released new API Version v1beta13. v1beta12 is now deprecated and customers should switch to v1beta13. b1Beta12 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

  • Released gcutil 1.3.4.

    • 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

    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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 2012

September 18th, 2012

  • Released gcutil 1.2.0.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • Changed the way gcutil is packaged.
    • Made some of the flag descriptions and an error messages more informative.
  • New Linux VM images v20120912
    • Added more aggressive validation for ssh keys.
    • make package is now included by default.

September 13th, 2012

  • 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.
  • Added ability to add or remove networks using the Console.

September 5th, 2012

  • 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 2012

June 28, 2012 + Google Compute Engine is available for limited preview!

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