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Release Notes

This page contains release notes for each version of the Google Compute Engine API.

Current version: v1

Release history

August 13, 2014

gcloud compute

Released gcloud compute into General Availability. Major changes from the last Open Preview release are:

  • Added new compute/zone and compute/region properties that can be used to set a default zone and region. To set the properties, run gcloud config set compute/zone ZONE and gcloud config set compute/region REGION .
  • Added support for overriding disk auto-deletion during instance deletion.
  • Updated the output of commands that mutate resources to be more human-friendly. The --format flag can be used for more verbose output.
  • Replaced all get subcommands with describe subcommands (e.g., gcloud compute instances get has been replaced with gcloud compute instances describe ).
  • Renamed the firewalls collection to firewall-rules .
  • Added support to the addresses collection for interacting with global addresses.

August 12, 2014

Zones

The scheduled maintenance for europe-west1-a zone has been cancelled and all zones have now transitioned to using transparent maintenance. This means that virtual machines set to live migrate will no longer be taken offline for maintenance in any zone.

For information on transparent maintenance and how to set your virtual machines to live migrate, see the Setting instance scheduling options documentation.

August 04, 2014

Zones

Added new zone, asia-east1-c , with transparent maintenance support. asia-east1-c is now available to all projects and users. See the Zones and Region documentation for more details.

July 22, 2014

Images & kernels

  • Released new Windows images windows-server-2008-r2-dc-v20140716 with the following updates:

    • Allows load balancing for Windows virtual machines that are not in a zone marked by a -windows suffix. See the Load Balancing documentation for more information.
    • Fixes a bug where Windows snapshots could not start new instances.
  • Enabled support for Windows virtual machine instances in all zones. Windows instances are no longer limited to Windows-specific zones. For information on starting and using Windows instances, see the Operating Systems documentation. Existing -windows zones will be inaccessible starting August 15th, 2014 , and it is recommended that you restart your instance using the newest Windows image in a non-Windows zone before August 15, 2014.

July 10, 2014

Zones

Added new zone, us-central1-f , with transparent maintenance support. us-central1-f is now available to all projects and users. See the Zones and Region documentation for more details.

June 25, 2014

Persistent disks

SSD persistent disks are now available in General Availability and open to all users and projects. For detailed information about SSD persistent disks, see Types of persistent disks . For pricing information, see the pricesheet .

June 09, 2014

Images & kernels

Released new images sles-11-sp3-v20140609 to address the OpenSSL security bulletin (CVE-2014-0224) for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

June 05, 2014

Images & kernels

Released new images v20140605 to address the OpenSSL security bulletin (CVE-2014-0224) . New images include:

  • debian-7-wheezy-v20140605
  • backports-debian-7-wheezy-v20140605
  • centos-6-v20140605
  • rhel-6-v20140605

June 04, 2014

Persistent disks

Released new SSD persistent disks in Limited Preview. SSD persistent disks are also charged at a different rate than standard persistent disks.

Projects

Added new Usage Export feature that lets you export daily and monthly rollup reports about your project's detailed Compute Engine usage.

May 27, 2014

Machine types

16 core machine types are now in General Availability. For pricing, review the price sheet .

May 13, 2014

API

Added new field to Image resources, named diskSizeGb , which shows the size of the image when it is restored to a persistent disk, in GB.

May 05, 2014

Networking

  • Updated default firewall rule names. Default firewall rules are automatically created with every project. These rules were previously named default-internal and default-ssh . New projects will have the same default firewalls but with the following new names:

    • default-allow-internal - Allows network connections of any protocol and port between any two instances.
    • default-allow-ssh - Allows TCP connections from any source to any instance on the network, over port 22.
  • Introduced new default firewall rule that will be created with each new project.

    • default-allow-icmp - Allows ICMP traffic from any source to any instance on the network.

April 17, 2014

API

Updated default Compute Engine API rate limit from 50,000 requests/day to 250,000 requests/day. See API rate limits for more information.

Metadata server

Introduced new Metadata-Flavor: Google header to replace the X-Google-Metadata-Request: True header. This also allows users to easily detect if they are running in Compute Engine by querying for the new header. For more information, see Metadata Server .

April 14, 2014

Zones

Introduced an Asia Pacific region ( asia-east1 ) and two new supported zones, asia-east1-a and asia-east1-b .

April 09, 2014

Images & kernels

Released new images v20140408 to address the OpenSSL security bulletin (CVE-2014-0160) . New images include:

  • debian-7-wheezy-v20140408
  • backports-debian-7-wheezy-v20140408
  • centos-6-v20140408
  • rhel-6-v20140408

April 07, 2014

Images & kernels

  • RHEL images have moved to General Availability status and are open to all users and projects.

    Note that there is an additional fee for using premium operating systems, including RHEL. Please review the price sheet for more information.

  • Added new Red Hat Cloud Access feature, which allows users to use their RHEL licenses on Compute Engine virtual machine instances.

API

Removed support for v1beta16. Please transition to using v1 if you haven't already.

April 02, 2014

gcutil

Release 1.15.0

New feature: Added feature where gcutil prompts the user to set an initial Windows password in the addinstance command if the source image is from a Google Windows project.

March 25, 2014

Introduced sustained use discounts

Sustained use discounts lowers the effective price of your instances as your usage goes up. When you use a virtual machine for an entire month, this amounts to an additional 30% discount. For more information, see the price sheet .

Sustained use discounts are effective starting April 1st, 2014.

Images & kernels

  • Windows Server images are now available in limited preview.

    Although we do not currently charge for use, you can review the price sheet for the intended Windows Server image pricing.

  • SUSE images are now generally available and is available for all users.

    Note that Compute Engine will start charging for SUSE images on April 1st, 2014. See the price sheet for more information.

Replica pool

Introduced new Replica Pool service , which allows you to create a managed pool of virtual machines based on a reusable template. For more information, see the Replica Pool documentation, or the Replica Pool API reference .

March 19, 2014

Images & kernels

  • RHEL images are now in open preview with a new image version, v20140318 .

    RHEL images are available to all users at no extra cost until April 1, 2014. On April 1, 2014, Compute Engine will start charging for use of these images according to the price sheet .

  • Released new Debian, CentOS, and Debian Backports images, v20140318 .

    • For Debian images, network time protocol (NTP) is now configured to use Google services instead of the public NTP pool.
  • Updated image packages

    • Google Daemon now syncs ssh keys immediately instead of on a per-minute intervals.
    • Improved systemd integration.
    • Fixed Google Daemon data corruption bug.
    • Startup scripts are now downloaded with curl instead of wget.
    • Removed harmless warnings.

March 14, 2014

gcutil

Release 1.14.2

Bug fix: Fixed issue where performing gcutil moveinstances with instances with disks whose autoDelete status is set to true would lead to loss of user data. gcutil moveinstances is now compatible with Compute Engine API v1 only.

March 10, 2014

Instances

Temporarily disabled support for Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) .

Compute Engine has disabled support for AVX due to a stability issue that we are actively investigating. We will re-enable AVX support as soon as we find and fix the root cause.

March 06, 2014

Images & kernels

SUSE images are now in open preview.

This means that SUSE images are available to all users at no extra cost until April 1, 2014. On April 1, 2014, Compute Engine will start charging for use of these images according to the price sheet .

March 05, 2014

API

Added ability for creating and deleting a root persistent disk when a virtual machine instance is created or deleted. See the Instances documentation for more information.

Persistent disks

  • Added support for restoring persistent disk snapshots to a persistent disk of a user-specified size.

    It is now possible to use the sizeGb parameter when restoring a snapshot. This can be used to create a persistent disk that is larger than the persistent disk snapshot. See Restoring snapshots to a Larger Size for more information.

  • Added support for setting the auto-delete state of a read-write persistent disk.

gcutil

Release 1.14.0

New features:

  • Switched to new, single API call for creating a virtual machine instance with a root persistent disk.
  • Added new command, setinstancediskautodelete , that sets the auto-delete option for persistent disks attached to virtual machine instances.
  • Added support for specifying a disk size when creating a disk using a snapshot.
  • Decreased the time spent waiting for SSH keys to propagate during initial instance creation from 120 seconds to 10 seconds.

February 20, 2014

Instances

Added support for Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) in new virtual machine instances.

All virtual machine instances created after February 11, 2014 have this feature enabled. To check if your virtual machine instance has this enabled, run the following command in your virtual machine instance:

me@my-inst:~$ $ cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep avx
<output should contain 'avx', 'xsave', and 'xsaveopt'>>

If you need to update your instance to use AVX, you must delete and recreate the instance.

December 17, 2013

Networking

Released new Protocol Forwarding feature

Protocol forwarding allows you to forward traffic to a single virtual machine instance, using a target instance. Protocol forwarding provides support for these additional features:

See Protocol forwarding for more information.

December 03, 2013

Google Compute Engine is now generally available!

Users can now feel confident using Compute Engine to support mission-critical workloads with 24/7 support and a 99.95% monthly SLA. The move to general availability also comes with a host of new features and changes, detailed below. For a full list, review our transition guide .

API

Released new v1 API

v1beta16 is now deprecated and customers should switch to v1 . v1beta16 will remain available until March 04, 2014 and v1beta15 will be discontinued on January 03, 2014. For the full details, read our transition guide .

Changes in v1 include (but are not limited to):

  • New support for custom kernels and removed support for Google-provided kernels

    Users can now use custom kernels with their images and no longer need to use Google-built kernels. The Kernels collection has been removed from v1 and all new images will include embedded kernel binaries as part of the image.

  • Removed scratch boot disks from v1.

    All scratch boot disks have been deprecated and we recommend transitioning to using persistent disks . In the v1 API, it is not possible to create a scratch boot disk.

  • Deprecated *-d machine types.

    All *-d machine types have been deprecated and no longer supported. Although you can still create instances with these machine types, we do not recommend this and will eventually remove these machine types completely.

Machine types

New machine types : We've added new 16-core-machine types that are now available for your instances. For more information, review machine types and pricing .

Persistent disks

We've introduced a new persistent disk model. Persistent disk performance now scales linearly with the size of the disk. Additionally, we are removing I/O charges for persistent disks completely and lowering the price of persistent disk storage. For more information, review the pricing documentation.

Metadata server

Release new metadata server version v1

The following are new changes with the v1 metadata server:

  • Requests to the metadata server will now require a security header.

    All requests to the metadata server will require the following header:

    X-Google-Metadata-Requests: True
    
  • Requests containing the header X-Forwarded-For will automatically be rejected.

gcutil

Release 1.12.0

  • New features

    • Added awareness of deprecated machine types to listmachinetypes and the machine type prompt when creating instances.
    • Made --persistent_boot_disk the default setting for the addinstance subcommand since scratch disks were removed from the v1 API. The --nopersistent_boot_disk flag can only be specified using the v1beta16 API.
    • Deprecated all kernel-related subcommands and flags when using the v1 API.
  • Other Changes

    • Updated gcutil to be distributed with the Cloud SDK .
    • Raised the default size of persistent disks to 500GB.
    • Made v1 the default API version.

Images & kernels

As part of the Google Compute Engine move to using full disk operation system images, we have made the following changes:

  • Released new backports-debian-wheezy image, which allows users to access new features and bug fixes from the backports kernel. See Using backports images for more information.
  • Deprecated Kernels collection.
  • Remove all support for kernels from the v1 API.

Additionally, FreeBSD , SELinux , and CoreOS images now known to be functional on Compute Engine instances with the move to full disk operation system images.

New premium operating systems limited preview program

The new premium OS limited preview program lets you use a SUSE or Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) images built explicitly for Compute Engine instances. Users who are interested in the program can review the documentation and sign up for the program on the Premium OS page .

November 25, 2013

Images & kernels

  • Released new Debian 7 and CentOS 6 images, v20131120 .

    • New images now contain embedded kernels rather than Google-built kernels. For instructions on how to upgrade you persistent disk to use an embedded kernel, review the documentation . Similarly, you can also upgrade your custom image to use an embedded kernel.
    • New images allow you to use dmidecode to determine if you are running on Google Compute Engine. See the documentation for more information.
  • Deprecated the Kernel resource .

    • Google will no longer provide custom kernels and will instead use community-provided kernels in Google-provided images.

November 12, 2013

Instance migration and transparent scheduled maintenance

Google Compute Engine now offers transparent scheduled maintenance in us-central1-a and us-central1-b ; these zones will no longer go offline for scheduled maintenance and Google Compute Engine will automatically move your instances out of the way of any scheduled maintenance activity. For more information, see maintenance events .

gcutil

Release 1.11.0

  • New features

    • Added a new subcommand, gcutil whoami , that prints out the email of the currently-authenticated user to standard out.
    • Added two new scope aliases: datastore and userinfo-email.
    • Added flags to gcutil addinstance and a new subcommand, gcutil setscheduling , for controlling instance scheduling parameters.
  • Other changes

    • Disabled host key checking for commands that rely on ssh because there is no secure channel to pass the host key to the client for the first time.

Images & kernels

  • Marked all Debian 6 images as deprecated.
  • Marked Debian 7 images older than debian-7-wheezy-v20130926 as deprecated.

October 22, 2013

Regions & zones

Deprecated us-central2-a zone. us-central2-a has been deprecated and will be permanently turned down by December 31st, 2013. You should move all resources to us-central1-a and/or us-central1-b (after November 11, 2013) and ensure that you are no longer using any resources in us-central2-a after December 31st, 2013.

October 10, 2013

Images & kernels

Added new kernel, gce-no-conn-track-v20130813 , and images v20130926 .

  • gce-no-conn-track-v20120813 kernel is identical to gce-v20130813 kernel except that connection tracking is no longer enabled.
  • Images v20130926 will use the new gce-no-conn-track kernel. To use a kernel with connection tracking turned on, specify the --kernel flag with a previous kernel version, such as gce-v20130813 .

October 07, 2013

Maintenance windows

Reduce duration of two upcoming maintenance windows for us-central1-a and us-central1-b zones. The new maintenance window durations are as follows:

  • us-central2-a : Oct 12, 2013 12:00:00 PM - Oct 22, 2013 10:00:00 AM
  • us-central1-b : Nov 2, 2013 12:00:00 PM - Nov 10, 2013 12:00:00 PM

gcutil

Release 1.9.1

Bug fixes

  • Fixed a bug in which the tilde in the authentication file path was not being expanded properly.

October 3rd, 2013

Networking

Added new features to load balancing :

  • New sessionAffinity feature allows users to determine the hashing method used to select backend machines that receive traffic.
  • New backupPools and failoverRatio feature allows users to specify a backup target pool, in case a primary target pool becomes unhealthy.

API

Released new API version v1beta16

v1beta15 is now deprecated and customers should switch to v1beta16 . v1beta15 will remain available until January 03, 2014 . For more information on how to transition to v1beta16, see our transition guide .

Changes in v1beta16 include:

  • Removed zone quotas.
  • Added new regional quotas .
  • Updated the global default quotas with new default limits.
  • Changed addresses().user field from a string to a list and renamed the field to addresses().users .
  • Added new setBackup method to set backup target pools for existing primary target pools.
  • Updated TargetPools resource representation to describe backup pools, failover ratios, and session affinity.

gcutil

Release 1.9.0

  • New features

    • Added gcutil settargetpoolbackup command.
    • Added new --backup_pool and --failover_ratio flags for the gcutil addtargetpool command.
  • Other

    • Removed usage field from gcutil getzone response.
    • Added new usage field to gcutil getregion response.
    • gcutil now outputs tables thats respect the terminal width. This feature can be turned off using the --respect_terminal_width flag.
    • gcutil deleteinstance with the --force flag now requests users to explicitly provide --[no]delete_boot_pd if any of the instances have a boot disk.

Projects

Stopped allowing cross-project resource references, such as the ability to create a disk from a snapshot in another project. Previously, it was allowed for projects whose access control lists (ACLs) allowed it, such as situations where multiple projects were owned by one user.

September 10, 2013

gcutil

Release 1.8.4

  • Bug fixes

    • Fixed an issue whereby reserved IP addresses were not preserved in the gcutil moveinstances subcommand.
    • Bug fixed where global flags were not being displayed on gcutil --help .
  • Other

  • Updated gcutil help text.

September 05, 2013

Images & kernels

Added new Debian images v20130816 .

  • Updated images to use latest kernel.
  • Updated images to use latest gcutil too.

September 04, 2013

API

Removed support for v1beta14. Please transition to using v1beta15 if you haven't already.

(Updated 09/09/2013) Removed support for cross-region external IP address assignment.

August 26, 2013

Persistent disks

Added support for differential snapshots .

Networking

Added information on how to send email using SendGrid .

Images & kernels

  • Added new CentOS image v20130813 with the following updates:

  • Updated image to use the latest kernel.

  • Updated image to use the latest gcutil tool.

  • Added new kernels v20130813 with the following updates:

    • Added multiqueue support.
    • Fixed an issue in scheduler that impacted Hadoop.
    • Added backport pvclock enlightment for softlockup detector.

August 6th, 2013

Networking

Launched new load balancing service

Google Compute Engine has launched a load balancing feature that lets you distribute traffic across your instances. Load balancing is especially useful for supporting heavy traffic to your instances and to provide redundancy to avoid failures.

For more information, visit the load balancing documentation . Additionally, you can review the load balancing reference documentation .

gcutil

Release 1.8.3

New features :

  • Added new prompt to select a persistent or scratch boot disk when using gcutil addinstance .

  • Changed naming of persistent boot disks that are created during instance creation from boot-<instance-name> to <instance-name> .

  • Added prompt to delete attached persistent disk when using gcutil deleteinstance .
  • Added support for load balancing .

Images & kernels

  • Added source code for custom tools that Google Compute Engine images uses, onto GitHub . The list of tools include:

    • Image Bundle - Creates an image file our of a disk attached to a virtual machine instance.
    • Google Startup Scripts - Scripts and configuration files that set up a Linux-based image to work smoothly with Google Compute Engine.
    • Google Daemon - A service that manages user accounts, maintains SSH login keys, and syncs public endpoint IP addresses.
  • Added new Debian and CentOS images v20130723 , with the following updates:

    • Added latest gsutil version which addresses issues where gsutil was not working properly.
    • Fixed typo which causes erroneous startup-script-url error.

July 15th, 2013

Kernels

  • Marked kernels older than gce-v20130603 as DEPRECATED .
  • Marked deprecated kernels gce-v20120912 and older as OBSOLETE .

For a list of kernels and their deprecation states, run the following command:

$ gcutil --project=<project-id> listkernels

For more information about kernel deprecation states, see the reference documentation .

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