Select the tab for how you plan to use the samples on this page:
When you use the Google Cloud console to access Google Cloud services and APIs, you don't need to set up authentication.
After installing the Google Cloud CLI, initialize it by running the following command:
gcloudinit
If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.
To use the REST API samples on this page in a local development environment, you use the credentials you provide to the gcloud CLI.
After installing the Google Cloud CLI, initialize it by running the following command:
gcloudinit
If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.
For more information, see Authenticate for using REST in the Google Cloud authentication documentation.
To get the permissions that you need to create an instance with added non-boot disks, ask your administrator to grant you the Compute Instance Admin (v1) (roles/compute.instanceAdmin.v1
) IAM role on the project. For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.
This predefined role contains the permissions required to create an instance with added non-boot disks. To see the exact permissions that are required, expand the Required permissions section:
The following permissions are required to create an instance with added non-boot disks:
compute.instances.create
on the project compute.disks.create
on the project You might also be able to get these permissions with custom roles or other predefined roles.
To create an instance that has additional non-boot disks created and attached, follow these steps:
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Create an instance page.
If prompted, select your project and click Continue.
The Create an instance page appears and displays the Machine configuration pane.
In the Machine configuration pane, do the following:
Optional: In the Zone field, select a zone for this instance.
The default selection is Any. If you don't change this default selection, then Google automatically chooses a zone for you based on machine type and availability.
Select the machine family for your instance. The Google Cloud console then displays the machine series that are available for your selected machine family. The following machine family options are available:
In the Series column, select the machine series for your instance.
If you selected GPUs as the machine family in the previous step, then select the GPU type that you want. The machine series is then automatically selected for the selected GPU type.
In the Machine type section, select the machine type for your instance.
In the navigation menu, click OS and storage. In the Operating system and storage pane that appears, complete the following steps.
To learn more about the parameters that you can configure while adding new disks, see About Persistent Disk and About Google Cloud Hyperdisk.
To configure your boot disk, click Change. The Boot disk pane appears and displays the Public images tab.
Configure the data source for the boot disk in one of the following ways:
To choose a public image as the data source for your boot disk, in the Public images tab, specify the following:
To choose a custom image as the data source for your boot disk, click Custom images and then, in the Custom images tab that appears, specify the following:
To choose a standard snapshot as the data source for your boot disk, click Snapshots and then, in the Snapshots tab that appears, specify the following:
To choose an archive snapshot as the data source for your boot disk, click Archive snapshots and then, in the Archive snapshots tab that appears, specify the following:
To choose an existing disk as your boot disk, click Existing disks. Then, in the Existing disks tab that appears, select an existing regional Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability volume in the Disk list.
Optional: For advanced configuration options, expand the
Show advanced configurations section.To confirm your boot disk options and return to the Operating system and storage pane, click Select.
To create a new non-boot disk and attach it to your instance, in the Additional storage and VM backups section, click Add new disk.
In the Add new disk pane that appears, do the following:
Repeat this step for each non-boot disk that you want to create and attach to your instance.
In the navigation menu, click Data protection. In the Data protection pane that appears, specify how you want to back up and replicate the data for your instance by doing the following.
To specify how you want to replicate data, do the following:
If you only want to use the specified data protection options on non-boot disks, select the Exclude boot disks checkbox.
In the navigation menu, click Networking. In the Networking pane that appears, do the following:
To permit HTTP or HTTPS traffic to the instance, select Allow HTTP traffic or Allow HTTPS traffic.
The Compute Engine adds a network tag to your instance and creates the corresponding ingress firewall rule that allows all incoming traffic on tcp:80
(HTTP) or tcp:443
(HTTPS). The network tag associates the firewall rule with the instance. For more information, see Firewall rules overview in the Cloud Next Generation Firewall documentation.
Optional: Specify other configuration options. For more information, see Configuration options during instance creation.
To create and start the instance, click Create.
In the Google Cloud console, activate Cloud Shell.
At the bottom of the Google Cloud console, a Cloud Shell session starts and displays a command-line prompt. Cloud Shell is a shell environment with the Google Cloud CLI already installed and with values already set for your current project. It can take a few seconds for the session to initialize.
Run the gcloud compute instances create
command to create an instance with additional non-boot disks.
You can add up to 127 non-boot disks while you're creating your instance. Specify the --create-disk
flag for each non-boot disk you create.
To create non-boot disks from a public or stock image, specify the image
or image-family
and image-project
properties with the --create-disk
flag. To create a blank disk, don't include these properties.
You can optionally include properties for:
--size
property.--type
property.replica-zones
property.gcloud compute instances create INSTANCE_NAME \ --zone=ZONE \ --image-project=IMAGE_PROJECT \ IMAGE_FLAG \ --create-disk DISK_IMAGE,image-project=DISK_IMAGE_PROJECT,size=SIZE_GB,type=DISK_TYPE \ --create-disk device-name=DISK_NAME,replica-zones=^:^ZONE:REMOTE-ZONE,boot=false
Replace the following:
INSTANCE_NAME
: name of the new instanceZONE
: zone to create the instance inIMAGE_PROJECT
: project containing the imageIMAGE_FLAG
: specify one of the following:
Use the --image IMAGE_NAME
flag to specify a specific version of a public or custom image. For example, --image debian-12-bookworm-v20241112
.
Use the --image-family IMAGE_FAMILY_NAME
flag to specify an image family. This creates the instance that uses the most recent, non-deprecated OS image in the image family. For example, if you specify --image-family debian-12
, then Compute Engine uses the latest version of the OS image in the Debian 12 image family when creating the instance.
For additional disks, replace the following:
DISK_IMAGE
: Specify one of the following: image=DISK_IMAGE_NAME
: name of the image that you want to use when creating a non-boot diskimage-family=DISK_IMAGE_FAMILY
>: an image family to use when creating a non-boot diskDISK_IMAGE_PROJECT
: an image project to which the disk image belongsSIZE_GB
: Optional: size of the non-boot diskDISK_TYPE
: Optional: full or partial URL for the type of the disk
For example, https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/diskTypes/hyperdisk-balanced
. To view the available disk types in one or more zones, use the gcloud compute disk-types list --zones=ZONE_LIST
command. Replace ZONE_LIST
with a comma-separated list of zones.
DISK_NAME
: Optional: the disk name displayed to the guest OS after the instance is created.
REMOTE_ZONE
: the zone where the disk should be replicated to
For blank disks, don't specify the image
, image-project
, or image-family
parameters.
For zonal disks, don't specify the disk property replica-zones
.
Before trying this sample, follow the Go setup instructions in the Compute Engine quickstart using client libraries. For more information, see the Compute Engine Go API reference documentation.
To authenticate to Compute Engine, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.
Before trying this sample, follow the Java setup instructions in the Compute Engine quickstart using client libraries. For more information, see the Compute Engine Java API reference documentation.
To authenticate to Compute Engine, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.
Before trying this sample, follow the Node.js setup instructions in the Compute Engine quickstart using client libraries. For more information, see the Compute Engine Node.js API reference documentation.
To authenticate to Compute Engine, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.
Before trying this sample, follow the Python setup instructions in the Compute Engine quickstart using client libraries. For more information, see the Compute Engine Python API reference documentation.
To authenticate to Compute Engine, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.
You can create up to 127 non-boot disks at the time you create an instance by using the initializeParams
property for each additional disk. Create additional disks with a public or private image. To add a blank disk, define the initializeParams
entry with no sourceImage
value. Include the disk property replicaZones
to create regional disks instead of zonal disks.
POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID
/zones/ZONE
/instances { "machineType":"zones/MACHINE_TYPE_ZONE/machineTypes/MACHINE_TYPE", "name":"VM_NAME
", "disks":[ { "initializeParams":{ "sourceImage":"projects/IMAGE_PROJECT/global/images/IMAGE" }, "boot":true }, { "initializeParams":{ "diskSizeGb":"SIZE_GB", "sourceImage":"projects/DISK_IMAGE_PROJECT/global/images/DISK_IMAGE", "diskType":"DISK_TYPE" } }, { "initializeParams":{ "diskSizeGb":"SIZE_GB", "diskType":"DISK_TYPE" }, }, { "boot": false, "deviceName":"DISK_NAME", "initializeParams": { "diskType": "DISK_TYPE", "replicaZones": [ "projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE", "projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/REMOTE_ZONE" ] } } ], "networkInterfaces":[ { "network":"global/networks/NETWORK_NAME" } ], "shieldedInstanceConfig":{ "enableSecureBoot":"ENABLE_SECURE_BOOT" } }
Replace the following:
PROJECT_ID
: ID of the project to create the VM inZONE
: zone to create the VM inMACHINE_TYPE_ZONE
: zone containing the machine type to use for the new VMMACHINE_TYPE
: machine type, predefined or custom, for the new VMVM_NAME
: name of the new VMIMAGE_PROJECT
: project containing the imagedebian-10
as the image family, specify debian-cloud
as the image project.IMAGE
: specify one of the following: IMAGE
: a specific version of a public image
For example, "sourceImage": "projects/debian-cloud/global/images/debian-10-buster-v20200309"
IMAGE_FAMILY
: an image family
This creates the VM from the most recent, non-deprecated OS image. For example, if you specify "sourceImage": "projects/debian-cloud/global/images/family/debian-10"
, Compute Engine creates a VM from the latest version of the OS image in the Debian 10
image family.
For additional disks, replace the following:
SIZE_GB
: disk sizeDISK_IMAGE
orDISK_IMAGE_FAMILY
: Specify either a source image or image family for the non-boot disk: DISK_IMAGE
: name of the image that you want to use as a non-boot disk. For example, "sourceImage": "projects/DISK_IMAGE_PROJECT/global/images/DISK_IMAGE"
. DISK_IMAGE_FAMILY
: an image family to use as a non-boot disk. For example, "sourceImage": "projects/DISK_IMAGE_PROJECT/global/images/family/DISK_IMAGE_FAMILY"
. DISK_TYPE
: full or partial URL for the type of the disk type. For example, https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/diskTypes/hyperdisk-balanced
. DISK_NAME
: Optional. The disk name displayed to the guest OS after the VM is created.REMOTE_ZONE
: the zone to replicate the regional disk to
For blank disks, don't specify the sourceImage
property.
For zonal disks, don't specify the replicaZones
property.
NETWORK_NAME
: the VPC network that you want to use for the VM. You can specify default
to use your default network.ENABLE_SECURE_BOOT
: Optional: If you chose an image that supports Shielded VM features, Compute Engine, by default, enables the virtual trusted platform module (vTPM) and integrity monitoring. Compute Engine does not enable Secure Boot by default.
If you specify true
for enableSecureBoot
, Compute Engine creates a VM with all three Shielded VM features enabled. After Compute Engine starts your VM, to modify Shielded VM options, you must stop the VM.
Format and mount the disks before using them.
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Last updated 2025-04-25 UTC.