GCP Compute Engine Cheat Sheet
Commands for creating, connecting to, and managing virtual machine instances and disks on Google Compute Engine.
2 PagesBeginnerFeb 15, 2026
Instance Lifecycle
Create, list, and control VM instances.
bash
gcloud compute instances create my-vm \ --zone=us-central1-a \ --machine-type=e2-medium \ --image-family=debian-12 --image-project=debian-cloud \ --boot-disk-size=20GBgcloud compute instances listgcloud compute instances stop my-vm --zone=us-central1-agcloud compute instances start my-vm --zone=us-central1-agcloud compute instances delete my-vm --zone=us-central1-a
SSH & File Transfer
Connect to and copy files to/from an instance.
bash
gcloud compute ssh my-vm --zone=us-central1-agcloud compute scp ./localfile.txt my-vm:~/remote.txt --zone=us-central1-agcloud compute scp my-vm:~/remote.txt ./localfile.txt --zone=us-central1-a
Disks & Images
Manage persistent disks and custom images.
bash
gcloud compute disks create my-disk --size=100GB --zone=us-central1-agcloud compute instances attach-disk my-vm --disk=my-disk --zone=us-central1-agcloud compute images create my-image --source-disk=my-disk --source-disk-zone=us-central1-a
Machine Families
Key machine families to know.
- E2- Cost-optimized, general purpose, shared-core options available
- N2 / N2D- Balanced price/performance for general workloads
- C2 / C3- Compute-optimized, high per-core performance
- A2 / A3- GPU-accelerated instances for ML/AI workloads
- Preemptible / Spot VM- Short-lived, discounted instances that can be reclaimed by GCP anytime
Key Concepts
Key key concepts to know.
- Instance Template- Reusable VM configuration used to create instances or managed instance groups
- Managed Instance Group (MIG)- Auto-scaling, self-healing group of identical VM instances
- Persistent Disk- Durable network-attached block storage independent of instance lifecycle
- Startup Script- Shell script run automatically on instance boot via metadata
Pro Tip
Use Spot VMs for fault-tolerant batch or stateless workloads — they cost up to 60-91% less than standard on-demand pricing, but design your workload to checkpoint progress since GCP can reclaim them with only 30 seconds notice.
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