Please note that the contents of this offline web site may be out of date. To access the most recent documentation visit the online version .
Note that links that point to online resources are green in color and will open in a new window.
We would love it if you could give us feedback about this material by filling this form (You have to be online to fill it)



  • Scale, performance, and value. Run your workloads on Google's infrastructure, paying only for what you use.
  • Flexibility and an Open Environment. Launch virtual machines with a variety of configurations using layer 3 load balancing to distribute work loads, or manage your workloads with additional solutions that were developed with our ecosystem of partners like RightScale , OpsCode , and Puppet Labs .
  • Predictable Performance. Deploy your applications on an infrastructure designed for strong isolation of users' actions with access to consistently fast and dependable core technologies.
  • Strong Security. Use built-in data privacy and security capabilities with data encryption on disk.
Learn More
Try it now

  1. Sign up

    1. If you don't already have one, sign up for a Google account .
    2. Create a Compute Engine enabled project via the Google Developers Console .

  2. Install the Cloud SDK

    System requirements:

    • Python 2.6.x or 2.7.x.

    gcutil is distributed as part of the Cloud SDK , which contains tools and libraries for managing resources on Google Cloud Platform.

    Installing on Linux or Mac OS X


    1. Download and install the Cloud SDK.

      You can download and install the Cloud SDK using the following command: 

      $ curl https://sdk.cloud.google.com | bash

      Alternatively, if you do not want to use curl , you can download and unzip the package manually:

      1. Download google-cloud-sdk.zip
      2. Unzip the file: 
        $ unzip google-cloud-sdk.zip
      3. Run the installation script: 
        $ ./google-cloud-sdk/install.sh

      Follow the prompts to complete the setup. When prompted if you would like to update your system path, select y .

    2. Restart your terminal to allow changes to your PATH to take affect.

      You can also run source ~/. <bash-profile-file> if you want to avoid restarting your terminal.

    3. Authenticate to the Google Cloud platform by running: 
      $ gcloud auth login

    Installing on Windows


    1. Download the Cloud SDK and install it .
    2. Authenticate to the Google Cloud platform by running the following command: 
      gcloud auth login

  3. Start a Google Compute Engine instance using gcloud compute .

    1. Set your Compute Engine project ID . 
      $ gcloud config set project PROJECT
    2. Create and start a virtual machine (VM) instance. 
      $ gcloud compute instances create example-instance
    3. Log in to the instance. 
      $ gcloud compute ssh example-instance

  4. What next?

Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License , and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License . For details, see our Site Policies .

Authentication required

You need to be signed in with Google+ to do that.

Signing you in...

Google Developers needs your permission to do that.