GCP Compute Agent Skill

Manage Compute Engine instances and instance templates. Configure managed instance groups and preemptible VMs. Use when deploying compute resources on GCP.

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511

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Install

one command, takes just this skill from the repository

npx skills add https://github.com/BagelHole/DevOps-Security-Agent-Skills --skill gcp-compute

The instruction itself

13 sections, as written by the author

GCP Compute Engine

Deploy, manage, and scale Compute Engine virtual machines on Google Cloud Platform.

When to Use

Deploying web servers, application backends, or batch-processing workloads on GCP
Running workloads that need full OS-level control (unlike Cloud Run or App Engine)
Creating managed instance groups for auto-healing and auto-scaling behind a load balancer
Provisioning GPU-attached VMs for ML training or rendering pipelines
Cost-optimizing non-critical workloads with preemptible or spot VMs

Prerequisites

Google Cloud SDK (gcloud) installed and authenticated
A GCP project with the Compute Engine API enabled
IAM role roles/compute.admin or scoped roles for instance management

gcloud auth list
gcloud config set project $PROJECT_ID
gcloud services enable compute.googleapis.com

Machine Types Reference

|--------|---------|-------|--------|----------|

| E2 | e2-micro | 0.25 | 1 GB | Dev/test, microservices |

| E2 | e2-medium | 1 | 4 GB | Light web servers |

| N2 | n2-standard-4 | 4 | 16 GB | General-purpose production |

| N2 | n2-highmem-8 | 8 | 64 GB | In-memory caches, databases |

| C2 | c2-standard-16 | 16 | 64 GB | Compute-intensive, HPC |

# List machine types available in a zone
gcloud compute machine-types list --zones=us-central1-a --filter="name~'e2-'"

# Create a custom machine type (6 vCPUs, 24 GB RAM)
gcloud compute instances create custom-vm \
  --custom-cpu=6 --custom-memory=24GB \
  --zone=us-central1-a \
  --image-family=debian-12 --image-project=debian-cloud

Create an Instance

# Production instance with shielded VM and startup script
gcloud compute instances create web-server \
  --machine-type=e2-medium \
  --zone=us-central1-a \
  --image-family=debian-12 \
  --image-project=debian-cloud \
  --boot-disk-size=20GB \
  --boot-disk-type=pd-balanced \
  --tags=http-server,https-server \
  --labels=env=production,team=backend \
  --metadata=enable-oslogin=TRUE \
  --shielded-secure-boot \
  --shielded-vtpm \
  --shielded-integrity-monitoring

# Instance with a startup script and service account
gcloud compute instances create app-server \
  --machine-type=e2-standard-2 \
  --zone=us-central1-a \
  --image-family=ubuntu-2204-lts \
  --image-project=ubuntu-os-cloud \
  --boot-disk-size=50GB \
  --metadata-from-file=startup-script=startup.sh \
  --service-account=app-sa@${PROJECT_ID}.iam.gserviceaccount.com \
  --scopes=cloud-platform

# Instance with an additional data disk
gcloud compute instances create db-server \
  --machine-type=n2-highmem-4 \
  --zone=us-central1-a \
  --image-family=debian-12 --image-project=debian-cloud \
  --boot-disk-size=20GB \
  --create-disk=name=data-disk,size=200GB,type=pd-ssd,auto-delete=no

Startup Script Example

#!/bin/bash
# startup.sh - runs on first boot and every reboot
set -euo pipefail
apt-get update && apt-get install -y nginx
systemctl enable nginx && systemctl start nginx
curl -X PUT -H "Metadata-Flavor: Google" \
  "http://metadata.google.internal/computeMetadata/v1/instance/guest-attributes/startup/status" \
  -d "complete"

Instance Templates and Managed Instance Groups

# Create an instance template
gcloud compute instance-templates create web-template \
  --machine-type=e2-medium \
  --image-family=debian-12 --image-project=debian-cloud \
  --boot-disk-size=20GB --tags=http-server \
  --metadata-from-file=startup-script=startup.sh

# Create a regional managed instance group (MIG) with health check
gcloud compute health-checks create http http-health-check \
  --port=80 --request-path=/healthz \
  --check-interval=10s --timeout=5s \
  --healthy-threshold=2 --unhealthy-threshold=3

gcloud compute instance-groups managed create web-mig \
  --template=web-template --size=3 \
  --region=us-central1 \
  --health-check=http-health-check --initial-delay=120

# Configure autoscaling
gcloud compute instance-groups managed set-autoscaling web-mig \
  --region=us-central1 \
  --min-num-replicas=2 --max-num-replicas=10 \
  --target-cpu-utilization=0.65 --cool-down-period=90

# Rolling update to a new template
gcloud compute instance-groups managed rolling-action start-update web-mig \
  --version=template=web-template-v2 \
  --region=us-central1 --max-surge=3 --max-unavailable=0

Preemptible and Spot VMs

# Spot VM (recommended over legacy preemptible)
gcloud compute instances create spot-worker \
  --machine-type=n2-standard-8 \
  --zone=us-central1-a \
  --image-family=debian-12 --image-project=debian-cloud \
  --provisioning-model=SPOT \
  --instance-termination-action=STOP

# Spot instance template for batch MIG
gcloud compute instance-templates create batch-template \
  --machine-type=n2-standard-4 \
  --image-family=debian-12 --image-project=debian-cloud \
  --provisioning-model=SPOT \
  --instance-termination-action=DELETE

Snapshots and Images

# Create a snapshot
gcloud compute disks snapshot web-server \
  --zone=us-central1-a \
  --snapshot-names=web-server-snap-$(date +%Y%m%d)

# Scheduled snapshot policy
gcloud compute resource-policies create snapshot-schedule daily-backup \
  --region=us-central1 --max-retention-days=14 \
  --daily-schedule --start-time=03:00

gcloud compute disks add-resource-policies web-server \
  --zone=us-central1-a --resource-policies=daily-backup

# Create a custom image from an instance
gcloud compute instances stop web-server --zone=us-central1-a
gcloud compute images create web-golden-image \
  --source-disk=web-server --source-disk-zone=us-central1-a \
  --family=web-server --labels=version=v1

Terraform Configuration

resource "google_compute_instance" "web" {
  name         = "web-server"
  machine_type = "e2-medium"
  zone         = "us-central1-a"
  tags         = ["http-server", "https-server"]

  boot_disk {
    initialize_params {
      image = "debian-cloud/debian-12"
      size  = 20
      type  = "pd-balanced"
    }
  }

  network_interface {
    subnetwork = google_compute_subnetwork.main.id
    access_config {}
  }

  metadata_startup_script = file("${path.module}/startup.sh")

  service_account {
    email  = google_service_account.app.email
    scopes = ["cloud-platform"]
  }

  shielded_instance_config {
    enable_secure_boot          = true
    enable_vtpm                 = true
    enable_integrity_monitoring = true
  }
}

resource "google_compute_instance_template" "web" {
  name_prefix  = "web-"
  machine_type = "e2-medium"

  disk {
    source_image = "debian-cloud/debian-12"
    auto_delete  = true
    boot         = true
    disk_size_gb = 20
  }

  network_interface {
    subnetwork = google_compute_subnetwork.main.id
  }

  lifecycle { create_before_destroy = true }
}

resource "google_compute_region_instance_group_manager" "web" {
  name               = "web-mig"
  base_instance_name = "web"
  region             = "us-central1"

  version {
    instance_template = google_compute_instance_template.web.id
  }

  target_size = 3
  named_port { name = "http"; port = 80 }

  auto_healing_policies {
    health_check      = google_compute_health_check.http.id
    initial_delay_sec = 120
  }
}

resource "google_compute_region_autoscaler" "web" {
  name   = "web-autoscaler"
  region = "us-central1"
  target = google_compute_region_instance_group_manager.web.id

  autoscaling_policy {
    min_replicas    = 2
    max_replicas    = 10
    cooldown_period = 90
    cpu_utilization { target = 0.65 }
  }
}

Common Operations

# SSH into an instance
gcloud compute ssh web-server --zone=us-central1-a

# List all instances with status
gcloud compute instances list \
  --format="table(name,zone,status,machineType.basename())"

# Stop / start / resize
gcloud compute instances stop web-server --zone=us-central1-a
gcloud compute instances set-machine-type web-server \
  --machine-type=e2-standard-4 --zone=us-central1-a
gcloud compute instances start web-server --zone=us-central1-a

# View serial port output (debug startup scripts)
gcloud compute instances get-serial-port-output web-server --zone=us-central1-a

Troubleshooting

| Symptom | Cause | Fix |

|---------|-------|-----|

| Instance stuck in STAGING | Quota exceeded or resource unavailable | Check quota with gcloud compute project-info describe; try another zone |

| Startup script not running | Syntax errors or wrong metadata key | Check serial output; ensure key is startup-script not startup_script |

| Cannot SSH | Firewall blocks port 22 or OS Login misconfigured | Add firewall rule for tcp:22; verify enable-oslogin metadata |

| Preempted too often | Zone resource pressure | Use Spot VM with STOP action; spread across zones in a MIG |

| Disk out of space | Boot disk too small | Use gcloud compute disks resize; enable --storage-auto-increase for data disks |

| MIG not healing | Health check misconfigured or initial delay too short | Verify health check path returns 200; increase --initial-delay |

gcp-networking - VPC, firewall rules, and load balancers for Compute Engine
terraform-gcp - Provision Compute Engine resources with Infrastructure as Code
gcp-gke - When workloads are better suited for containers than VMs
gcp-cloud-sql - Managed databases that Compute Engine applications connect to

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17k tokens

How to use it

Copy the folder

Take bagelhole/gcp-compute from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.

Check the name does not clash

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Install what it needs

The instructions reference apt. Without those the skill loads but fails at the first command.

GCP Compute Agent Skill

Install

The instruction itself

GCP Compute Engine

When to Use

Prerequisites

Machine Types Reference

Create an Instance

Startup Script Example

Instance Templates and Managed Instance Groups

Preemptible and Spot VMs

Snapshots and Images

Terraform Configuration

Common Operations

Troubleshooting

Related Skills

Other skills for the same job

How to use it