Starting Datalab on a Chromebook

Objective: This page shows the steps to start Datalab from a Cloud Shell session. This technique can be used if you are unable to install Google Cloud SDK on an unsupported platform or device, such as a Google Chromebook. If you can install the Google SDK, follow the Quickstart steps instead of the steps in this guide to setup and launch Datalab.

Before You Begin

1. Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

2. In the Google Cloud Console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

   Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

   Go to project selector

3. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Cloud project. Learn how to confirm that billing is enabled for your project.

4. Enable the Google Compute Engine and Cloud Source Repositories APIs.

   Enable the APIs

5. In the Google Cloud Console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

   Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

   Go to project selector

6. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Cloud project. Learn how to confirm that billing is enabled for your project.

7. Enable the Google Compute Engine and Cloud Source Repositories APIs.

   Enable the APIs

Launch Datalab from Cloud Shell

1. Start a Cloud Shell session from a Google Cloud Platform project.
2. In the Cloud Shell session window, run the following command to create a Datalab VM instance. Make sure to select a unique name for the instance, which must start with a lowercase letter followed by up to 62 lowercase letters, numbers, or hyphens, and cannot end with a hyphen.

   datalab create instance-name
   

3. Open your browser to the Datalab home page by clicking the Web preview button , and then selecting Change port→Port 8081.

   

   The Datalab home page opens in your browser.

   

The connection to your Datalab instance remains open while the Cloud Shell session is active. If the Cloud Shell session window is closed or the session is inactive for 60 minutes, the connection will terminate. Restart the Cloud Shell session and then run the following command in the Cloud Shell terminal window to reestablish the connection to your Datalab instance.

 datalab connect instance-name

After reestablishing the connection, use the Cloud Shell Web Preview button to select Port 8081 to reopen the Datalab home page in your browser.

Cloud Shell Usage Limits. Keeping your Datalab connection open in Cloud Shell for an extended period may result in a warning message that you are about to exceed Cloud Shell usage limits. If a limit is exceeded, your session and its connection to the Datalab instance will be closed.