Creating Compute Engine VMs

Compute VM

In this lesson, we will explore each property of the Compute Instance. We will use Console(GUI) for this. Later on, once we cover all the properties, we will see how to create an equivalent Google SDK command with a single click.

Introduction

Just to recap, virtual machines (Compute Engine) is useful when you need ultra-high performance using Persistent SSDs, Local SSDs, GPUs, and high memory and compute power. Also, when container orchestration is not required.

VMs are an essential part of many infrastructures. Even Virtual Private Clouds are also created using Compute Engine.

Workloads such as 3D rendering which requires multiple GPUs or batch processing in a cost-efficient manner using Preemptive instances are great examples of VM use cases. So, let’s create our first virtual machine.

Creating a virtual machine using GUI

Open Main menu > Compute Engine > VM Instances.

If the compute engine API is not enabled you might see a text saying API is being enabled. Once API is enabled.

You should see the dashboard to create a virtual machine. Click on the create instance button.