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Cloud Workstations

Cloud Workstations

Fully managed development environments built to meet the needs of security-sensitive enterprises. It enhances the security of development environments while accelerating developer onboarding and productivity, including a native integration with Gemini for Google Cloud.

  • Access secure and fast development environments anytime using browser or local IDE

  • Enable administrators to easily provision, scale, manage, and secure development environments

  • Customize development environments with your preferred IDE and through custom container images

  • Build applications faster with AI-powered assistance from Gemini Code Assist

Benefits

Enhance security of your development environments

Extend your security posture to your IDEs with centrally managed, yet configurable, security mechanisms based on industry best practices. Mitigate exfiltration by preventing the storage of source code locally.

Increase developer productivity with custom tools

Improve developer productivity with secure and fast development environments accessible using browser or local IDE, while supporting multiple popular IDEs, customizable developer tools, and Gemini Code Assist. 

Simplify onboarding for new and remote developers

Onboard your developers faster no matter where they are located, with managed cloud-based development environments, while ensuring replicability and consistency using container-defined environments.

Key features

Key features

Run code in your real environment, inside your VPC

Cloud Workstations can run inside your VPC, allowing you to develop and run code inside your private network and in your staging environment, so you don’t need to emulate your services. You can also enforce “no source code on local devices” policies and bring the same security mechanisms used for production workloads to your development environments, such as VPC Service Controls (VPC SC), private ingress/egress, Cloud Audit Logs, and granular IAM controls.

Multi-IDE support

Cloud Workstations supports any code editors and applications that can be run in a container. IDEs can also be personalized and support extensions. Enjoy the benefits of remote development without needing to change your IDE or workflow using our managed IDEs such as Code OSS for Cloud Workstations, or multiple JetBrains IDEs such as IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, Rider, and CLion through JetBrains Gateway, as well as Posit Workbench (with RStudio Pro).

CW multi-editor support

Dev environments ready to go in minutes

Quickly onboard developers using the Google Cloud console, and use shared workstation configurations to enable consistent development environment definitions, which can be easily updated and synchronized across all developers with a single action. Developers can create and start a workstation in minutes, where the workstation configuration will be automatically applied, addressing “works on my machine” and configuration drift problems.

Consistent environments across teams

Cloud Workstations provides a managed experience using predefined or custom containers to specify your environment configuration, such as pre-installed tools, libraries, IDE extensions, preloaded files, and start-up scripts. You can also ensure all developers get the latest versions and patches when they start working by setting a session limit and simply updating your container images. Cloud Workstations will then handle ensuring that they are all updated according to the container image you specified.

Built-in Gemini Code Assist integrations

Cloud Workstations supports Gemini Code Assist, which provides AI-powered assistance to developers, such as auto code completion, code generation, and chat. Developers can leverage these Gemini Code Assist capabilities directly in Cloud Workstations to build applications faster and more efficiently.

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Cloud Workstations removes the technical barriers by providing a powerful and scalable solution for all the developers we have across the world.

Sebastian Moran, Head of Data Engineering, L’Oréal

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Documentation

Cloud Workstations quickstart, guides, and more

Google Cloud Basics

Create a workstation

Learn how to create your first workstation in Cloud Workstations. 

Architecture

Cloud Workstations architecture

Learn about the architecture and resources used by Cloud Workstations.

Google Cloud Basics

Base editor overview

Learn about the Cloud Workstations base editor, its components, and helpful features. 

Google Cloud Basics

Develop remotely with JetBrains IDEs

Learn about the plugin for JetBrains Gateway, which lets you develop with JetBrains IDEs, such as IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, Rider, CLion, PhpStorm, and WebStorm.

Google Cloud Basics

Configure private clusters

Learn how private clusters work and how to set them up in Cloud Workstations using Private Service Connect and VPC Service Controls. 

Tutorial

Code with Gemini Code Assist

Check this tutorial on how to create an application with Gemini Code Assist in Cloud Workstations.

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All features

All features

Any language, any library, any code editor

Install and customize Cloud Workstations to use any combination of languages, libraries, or even code editors of your choice. You can even bring your own internal tools.

Support for self-hosted tools

Supports third-party developer and DevOps tools such as GitLab and TeamCity. You can configure access to tools that are either external, self-hosted, on-premises, or even in other clouds. 

Easy to scale and manage

No infrastructure to manage. You create a workstation configuration for each of your teams, and Cloud Workstations provides on-demand development environments according to the templates you define.

Custom virtual machines

Provides flexible and configurable machine types to help you size workstations to your needs, with configurable CPU, RAM, and storage settings.

GPU support

Supports GPU platforms, including NVIDIA A100, T4, V100, P100, and P4 to accelerate machine learning and data processing tasks.

Persistent Disk support

Cloud Workstations supports attaching a Persistent Disk to each workstation’s home folder, persisting data so you don’t need to keep your workstations running when not in use.

Resource cost optimization

Set up inactivity timeouts to automatically shut down idle workstations and reduce unnecessary costs.

Develop in your staging environment using VPC support

Cloud Workstations can run inside your VPC, allowing you to develop and run code inside your private network so you don’t need to emulate your services.

VPC Service Controls

Define a security perimeter around your Cloud Workstations to constrain access to sensitive resources and mitigate data exfiltration risks.

Private ingress and egress

For enhanced security, Cloud Workstations can be configured to limit access to only users with direct access to your private network.

Granular IAM controls

Cloud Workstations follows the principle of least privilege, whereby default users only have access to the workstations they created. Administrators have the option to grant additional access levels as needed.

BeyondCorp Enterprise integration

Context-based access policies and prevention of code exfiltration on download, copy, paste, print, and more.

Automatic environment updates

Set up a maximum workstation session limit. This ensures that all developers use the latest version of your development environment updates and patches automatically when they log in.

Full customization using container images

All development environments in Cloud Workstations are defined as containers, which you can extend, modify, or even fully replace. This also gives you added flexibility to customize tools, libraries, IDE extensions, preloaded files, and start-up scripts.

Access using multiple interfaces

Access Cloud Workstations through multiple different interfaces such as browsed IDEs, local IDEs, SSH tunnels, or even TCP tunnels, so you can develop from the interface that best suits your needs.

Multi-IDE support

Use managed IDEs such as Code OSS for Cloud Workstations, or multiple JetBrains IDEs such as IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, Rider, CLion. You can also use Posit Workbench (with RStudio Pro), or bring your own code editor for extra flexibility when defining your development workflow and tooling.

Web preview

Quickly access any Cloud Workstations ports directly from your browser with built-in port forwarding, which IAM controls automatically enforce.

JetBrains remote development support

JetBrains IDE developers can access Cloud Workstations using JetBrains Gateway, so they can quickly start developing with their preferred IDE, while having a remote backend in the cloud.

Visual Studio Code remote development support

Visual Studio Code developers can access Cloud Workstations using remote SSH, so they can use Visual Studio Code locally while having a remote backend in the cloud.

SSH access enforced using IAM policies

Cloud Workstations supports SSH access, tunneled over a WebSocket connection. All SSH access is subject to Google Cloud authorization and IAM permissions, so you don’t need to manage SSH keys or store them locally while ensuring access controls.

Pricing

Pricing

Pricing for Cloud Workstations is based on per-hour usage of the Cloud Workstations VMs, disk storage, workstation management, control plane, and network traffic that you use to support your developer workstations. 

Partners

Our partners

Cloud Workstations integrates with leading developer solutions to bring a better experience to our customers.

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