GCP · Compute

Compute Engine

Scalable VMs on Google's infrastructure.

Overview

Compute Engine provides configurable Linux/Windows VMs with custom machine types, GPUs, sustained-use discounts and live migration.

When to use it

Lift-and-shift of on-prem workloads
Test agents, build runners, load generators
Workloads needing custom kernels or GPUs

Setup

Enable Compute Engine API in your GCP project.
Console → Compute Engine → Create instance.
Pick machine type (e2-micro for free tier, n2-standard for prod).
Choose boot image, network tags and firewall rules.
Add SSH keys (project- or instance-level) and create.

How to use

Create a VM with gcloud

gcloud compute instances create qa-runner \
  --machine-type=e2-medium \
  --image-family=debian-12 --image-project=debian-cloud \
  --tags=http-server

SSH in

gcloud compute ssh qa-runner --zone=us-central1-a

Delete

gcloud compute instances delete qa-runner --zone=us-central1-a

QA use cases

Dedicated Selenium/Playwright grid nodes in a managed instance group.
k6/JMeter load generators in an autoscaling MIG.
Scheduled nightly regression VMs spun up by Cloud Scheduler + Cloud Functions.