Google Compute Engine — exploded view of the create instance dialog
With all of the excitement around Kubernetes engine, Cloud ML, BigQuery, Spanner, and other Google Cloud products, it’s easy to overlook how amazing Compute Engine has become since it was announced in 2012.
When I show off Compute Engine to friends, I usually walk them through the “create instance” dialogs. I can usually get them to say “oh wow” after only a few seconds. A dialog is worth a thousand words — so I put together the following exploded view of the create instance dialog:
These dialogs were captured on April 2, 2018 and they always evolving. For example, we recently announced the NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPUs, added new regions and zones, added images for SQL Server 2017, etc., so if it’s been more than a few weeks, check the real dialogs for the latest features.
Also note that many configurations and features are not available in all zones and in all combinations (e.g. you can’t use auto-migration if you have locally attached SSDs).
There are also features that a static dialog screenshot can’t show, like the super fast boot times and SSD performance, so check it out.
Links to learn more: