Google Compute Engine – GCE

Google Compute Engine is the IaaS component of the GCP that lets you create and run VM on Google infrastructure. Each VM is called a Compute Engine instance. A Compute Engine instance can run Linux and Windows server images provided by Google or any customized versions of these images. You can also build and run images of other operating systems.

You can choose the machine properties of your instances, such as the number of virtual CPUs and the amount of memory, by using a set of predefined machine types or by creating your own custom machine types.

Creating VMs

This section will walk you through creating a VM instance. There are several ways to create a VM instance in GCE:

• Through the web console
• The gcloud command-line tool from Cloud Shell
• Using API calls

There actually is a fourth way as well—that's an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) approach relying on the Deployment Manager. Infrastructure automation is a big deal these days, and we'll get to this approach—but in...