Quickstart

This page shows how to enable Cloud Tools for PowerShell, authenticate with the gcloud CLI, and run PowerShell cmdlets.

Before you begin

Complete the following steps:

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 Google Cloud project.

4. 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

5. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

6. Install the gcloud CLI from the PowerShell command line by running the following command as an administrator:

Install-Module GoogleCloud

Authenticate with gcloud CLI

Cloud Tools for PowerShell uses your credentials and settings stored in the gcloud CLI to enable the cmdlets. To use the cmdlets, first log in using the gcloud CLI:

1. At the command prompt, run the following command:

   gcloud init

2. Accept the option to log in using your Google user account:

   To continue, you must log in. Would you like to log in (Y/n)? Y

3. In your browser, log in to your Google user account when prompted and click Allow to grant permission to access Google Cloud resources.

4. At the command prompt, select a Google Cloud project in which you have Owner, Editor, or Viewer permissions:

   Pick a cloud project to use:
   [1] [my-project-1]
   [2] [my-project-2]
   ...
   Please enter your numeric choice:

Run PowerShell cmdlets

After authenticating, you can start using Cloud Tools for PowerShell. Open a PowerShell window and try running the following commands.

Get all buckets for the current project, for a specific project, or a specific bucket:

$currentProjBuckets = Get-GcsBucket
$specificProjBuckets = Get-GcsBucket -Project my-project-1
$bucket = Get-GcsBucket -Name my-bucket-name

List all Compute Engine instances associated with a project:

Get-GceInstance -Project my-project-1 |
    Sort Status |
    Format-Table Name, Status -GroupBy Status

    Status: RUNNING

Name    Status
----    ------
my-vm-2 RUNNING
my-vm-3 RUNNING

    Status: TERMINATED

Name    Status
----    ------
my-vm-1 TERMINATED

Navigate Cloud Storage with PowerShell provider

Cloud Tools for PowerShell includes a PowerShell provider for Cloud Storage. This provider allows you to use commands like cd, dir, copy and del to navigate and manipulate your data in Cloud Storage as if the data were on a local file system.

To directly use the provider, you can start Cloud Tools for PowerShell using the shortcut from the start menu. This will launch a PowerShell console with the provider loaded:

# Navigate to Cloud Storage
cd gs:\
# Show the available buckets
ls
# Create a new bucket
mkdir my-new-bucket

You can also make the Cloud Storage provider available in any PowerShell session by importing the Cloud Tools for PowerShell module via Import-Module GoogleCloud.

What's next

You can learn more about specific cmdlets by referring to the Cloud Tools for PowerShell cmdlet reference, or by using the built-in help system from within PowerShell:

Get-Help New-GcsBucket