Google Cloud Compute Engine

Platform

Products

name: E2 shared-core virtual machines; category: shared_core_virtual_machine; cpu isolation: shared; description: Low-cost e2-micro, e2-small and e2-medium machine types expose two guest vCPUs while sustaining fractional aggregate CPU. The e2-micro benchmark exposes 2 vCPUs but sustains only 0.25 vCPU total and can burst for about 30 seconds at full utilization., name: General-purpose virtual machines; category: virtual_machine; cpu isolation: multitenant; description: Balanced x86 and Arm families including N4, N4A, N4D, N2, N2D, N1, C4, C4A, C4D, C3, C3D, E2 and Tau series, with predefined and eligible custom machine types., name: Compute-optimized and HPC virtual machines; category: compute_optimized_virtual_machine; cpu isolation: multitenant; description: C-series, H4D and H3 configurations for compute-bound, high-performance and multi-node workloads, including eligible Cloud RDMA configurations., name: Network-optimized virtual machines; category: network_optimized_virtual_machine; cpu isolation: multitenant; description: C4N and eligible M4N configurations for high network bandwidth, packet processing, and high block-storage throughput and IOPS., name: Memory-optimized machines; category: memory_optimized_machine; cpu isolation: multitenant_or_bare_metal; description: X4, M4N, M4, M3, M2 and M1 configurations for memory-intensive workloads; the family includes both virtual-machine and supported bare-metal shapes., name: Storage-optimized machines; category: storage_optimized_machine; cpu isolation: multitenant_or_bare_metal; description: Z3 virtual-machine and bare-metal configurations combine compute with dense local Titanium SSD for databases, analytics, search and distributed file systems., name: Accelerator-optimized machines; category: gpu_and_accelerator_machine; cpu isolation: multitenant_or_bare_metal; description: A4X Max, A4X, A4, A3, A2, G4 and G2 families provide integrated NVIDIA accelerators for AI, machine learning, HPC and visualization; availability varies by series and zone., name: Confidential VMs; category: confidential_virtual_machine; cpu isolation: multitenant; description: Eligible machine types protect sensitive code and data with memory encryption while processing; supported confidential-computing technology varies by machine series and location., name: Spot VMs; category: interruptible_virtual_machine; cpu isolation: depends_on_machine_type; description: Discounted excess Compute Engine capacity for fault-tolerant workloads. Google can preempt the VM at any time, capacity is not guaranteed and Spot VMs are excluded from the Compute Engine SLA., name: Sole-tenant nodes; category: dedicated_virtual_machine_host; cpu isolation: dedicated; description: A sole-tenant node maps one-to-one to a physical server and can host multiple customer VMs, providing hardware isolation and dedicated-host licensing support.

Operating systems

AlmaLinux 8, 9 and 10, CentOS Stream 9 and 10, Container-Optimized OS, Debian 11, 12 and 13, Fedora CoreOS, Oracle Linux 8, 9 and 10, Rocky Linux 8, 9 and 10, including eligible optimized and accelerated images, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, 9 and 10, including eligible SAP and extended-support variants, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 variants, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, 22.04 LTS, 24.04 LTS and 26.04 LTS, including eligible Ubuntu Pro and accelerator variants, Windows Server 2016, 2019, 2022 and 2025, SQL Server premium images on supported Windows Server releases, custom, private, shared and imported images

Virtualization

Google security-hardened KVM-based hypervisor

CPU isolation

E2 shared-core machine types expose two guest vCPUs with fractional sustained CPU and short bursts, ordinary Compute Engine VMs are isolated by Google's KVM-based hypervisor on multitenant physical hosts, sole-tenant nodes map one-to-one to a physical server reserved for the customer's VMs

Features

• App installation name: Google Cloud Marketplace; artifacts: virtual-machine solutions, Kubernetes applications, SaaS products, data products; capabilities: discover and deploy eligible partner and Google solutions through Cloud Console, manage VM deployments and eligible deployment resources, deploy supported solutions through command-line or Terraform workflows where the listing provides them
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• Templates & images types: public, custom, private and shared OS images, machine images that preserve VM configuration, metadata, permissions and attached-disk data, standard and instant disk snapshots, global and regional instance templates, startup scripts and cloud-init-compatible guest initialization, Terraform deployments through Infrastructure Manager; interfaces: Cloud Console, gcloud CLI, REST API, client libraries, Terraform, Infrastructure Manager
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• Network orchestration interfaces and tooling: Cloud Console, REST APIs, gcloud CLI, client libraries, Terraform, Infrastructure Manager; services: global VPC networks with regional IPv4 and IPv6 subnets, routes and multiple network interfaces, Cloud NAT, Cloud VPN, Cloud Interconnect, VPC Network Peering and Private Service Connect, zonal and regional managed instance groups with autoscaling, autohealing and rolling updates, reservations, placement policies and regional distribution controls, Google Kubernetes Engine managed Kubernetes clusters and node pools
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• Firewall services: name: VPC firewall rules; scope: stateful ingress and egress allow or deny rules for IPv4 and IPv6 traffic, selectable by network tags or service accounts, name: Hierarchical, global and regional network firewall policies; scope: centrally managed policy rules across organizations, folders, VPC networks or regions, name: Cloud Next Generation Firewall; scope: optional advanced inspection, threat prevention and intrusion-detection capabilities; controls: direction, priority, action, source and destination IPv4 or IPv6 range, protocol and port, network tag, service account
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• Load balancer name: Cloud Load Balancing; types: external, internal, global, cross-region, regional, proxy, passthrough; layers: Layer 7 Application Load Balancers, Layer 4 Network Load Balancers; protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, HTTP/2, HTTP/3, TCP, TLS, UDP, ESP, ICMP, other IP protocols on supported passthrough products; capabilities: health checks, anycast front ends for global products, content-based routing, cross-region failover, managed instance group backends, Cloud CDN integration on supported Application Load Balancers
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• DNS management name: Cloud DNS and Cloud Domains; capabilities: public authoritative and private managed zones, forwarding, peering and zonal private zones, DNSSEC for supported public zones, weighted round-robin, geolocation and failover routing policies, record and zone management through Console, API, gcloud and Terraform; domain registration: status: offered; service: Cloud Domains; capabilities: search, buy, renew and manage supported domain registrations through a Google Cloud project, Cloud DNS or custom name-server selection, API, gcloud and Console access; limitations: third-party transfer-in is unavailable, domain and email forwarding are retired, Dynamic DNS is retired, domains cannot be moved between Google Cloud projects
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• Git integrations services: Cloud Build repositories (2nd gen), Developer Connect; providers: GitHub, GitHub Enterprise, GitLab, GitLab Enterprise Edition, Bitbucket Cloud, Bitbucket Data Center; capabilities: authenticated regional repository connections, build triggers for branch pushes, tag pushes and pull requests, manual, Pub/Sub and webhook triggers through Cloud Build repositories where supported, gcloud, API and eligible Terraform connection management; limitation: Cloud Source Repositories is unavailable to most new customers and is not supported by the current Cloud Build 2nd-generation or Developer Connect repository flow.
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• Container registry services: Artifact Registry, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Build, Compute Engine; providers: Google Artifact Registry, Docker Hub, GitHub Container Registry, custom supported upstream Docker registries; capabilities: store and manage Docker and OCI container images, Docker CLI push and pull with Google Cloud authentication, remote repositories that proxy and cache Docker Hub, GitHub Container Registry or supported custom upstreams, standard, remote and virtual repository modes, IAM-controlled image pull by eligible Compute Engine and GKE service accounts, image metadata, vulnerability scanning, SBOM and build-provenance attachments
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