Compute Engine release notes

Generally available: You can convert a single-project reservation into a shared reservation, or a shared reservation into a single-project reservation. Modify the share type for a reservation to share your reserved resources with other projects in your Google Cloud organization, or to restrict access to only the reservation's owner project. For more information, see Modify the share type for a reservation.

Generally available: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) images pre-configured with Logical Volume Manager (LVM) partitioning are available for Compute Engine in the Google Cloud console. LVM-enabled images let you manage volumes flexibly and size partitions dynamically on your boot disk.

For more information, see Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Generally available: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Extended Update Support (EUS) images are available for Compute Engine in the Google Cloud console. RHEL EUS images let you lock your VMs to a specific minor version while receiving critical security updates and bug fixes for up to two years.

For more information, see Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Generally available: The network- and memory-optimized M4N machine series is generally available. Powered by 5th generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Emerald Rapids), M4N instances are purpose-built for network and block storage-intensive workloads such as:

• High-performance vector databases
• Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) data layers
• Massive in-memory context caching
• Real-time semantic search

The M4N machine series delivers the highest I/O performance available in Compute Engine, supporting up to 400 Gbps of network bandwidth. M4N also offers leading block storage performance with Hyperdisk Extreme that scales up to 25 GiB/s of bandwidth and 1M IOPS. M4N instances are available in predefined machine shapes, ranging in size from 16 to 224 vCPUs and up to 5,952 GB of DDR5 memory.

Preview: Image Builder is available in allowlist-only Preview. Image Builder is a declarative operating system (OS) image customization tool that automates the process of building, customizing, and validating custom OS images within Google Cloud by using Cloud Build. For more information about Image Builder, see About Image Builder.

To onboard your project and request access, fill out the request form.

Preview: Advanced Compute Images provide high-performance images to support your artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads running on non-GPU instances on Google Cloud.

Advanced Compute Images optimized for CPUs provide a single source of trusted, performance-tuned OS images that remove the need for manual image building for specialized workloads. Each image version is pre-installed with the necessary drivers, network fabrics, and Slurm agents to help you run your workloads.

Generally available: You can use zonal and global extension policies in VM Extension Manager to automatically install and manage extensions, such as the Ops Agent, on a fleet of VMs and to ensure consistent extension states across your project.

To improve observability of enforcement states and guest agent activities, you can view VM extension logs by using Cloud Logging. These logs help you identify and troubleshoot issues with VM extensions.

For more information, see About VM Extension Manager.

Generally available: The U4 Ultra Low Latency (ULL) network-optimized machine family is generally available with allowlist for ULL Solution customers. Designed for financial exchange ecosystems, the U4 machine family provides industry-specific networking capabilities and ultra-low latency unicast and multicast communication. All U4 instances leverage Google's Titanium IPU.

The U4 machine family includes the following machine series:

• U4P machine series: Bare metal instances powered by 5th generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Emerald Rapids), delivering specialized compute for exchange operators running core trading systems.
• U4C machine series: Bare metal instances powered by 5th generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Emerald Rapids), designed for exchange participants executing latency-sensitive trading strategies.
• U4S machine series: Virtual machine (VM) instances powered by 6th generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Granite Rapids), providing advanced flexibility and cost optimization for adjacent workloads and ecosystem services requiring close physical proximity to U4P and U4C instances.

For more information, see the U4 machine family overview in the ULL Solution documentation.

Generally available: Compute flexible committed use discounts (CUDs) are available for G2 and G4 GPU accelerator-optimized machine series. The supported resources include vCPUs, memory, Local SSD disks, and GPUs.

Compute flexible CUDs are spend-based CUDs that apply to eligible Google Cloud spend across Compute Engine, GKE, and Cloud Run. For G2 and G4 machine series, compute flexible commitments provide the flexibility to switch between eligible machine series and regions depending on your workload needs. For GPUs that belong to these machine series, compute flexible commitments don't require attached reservations.

For more information, see Compute flexible CUDs.

A vulnerability (CVE-2026-6726) in the Trusted Computing Group's TPM 2.0 reference implementation code was discovered and is being addressed. For more information, see the GCP-2026-054 security bulletin.

Changed: The minimum provisioned throughput for a Hyperdisk ML volume attached to more than 20 instances is 20 MiB/s per instance, reduced from 100 MiB/s.

For more information, see Share a Hyperdisk ML volume between instances.

Public preview: you can create a machine image that includes or excludes specific non-boot disks attached to a source Compute Engine instance. For more information, see Create a machine image from specific disks. You can also create a new disk by restoring a specific individual disk from a machine image without creating a new Compute Engine instance. For more information, see Create a disk from a machine image.

Hyperdisk Balanced volumes on C4D instances have increased maximum throughput limits for these machine types:

• c4d-*-96: 3,125 MiB/s (up from 2,800 MiB/s).
• c4d-*-192: 6,250 MiB/s (up from 4,800 MiB/s).
• c4d-*-384: 12,500 MiB/s (up from 10,000 MiB/s).

For detailed performance limits, see Hyperdisk Balanced performance limits when attached to an instance.

The maximum IOPS per GiB for Hyperdisk Balanced Storage Pools have increased from 4 IOPS per GiB. The new limits depend on the provisioning type:

• Standard performance: 30 IOPS per GiB
• Advanced performance: 6 IOPS per GiB

For more information, see Limits for Hyperdisk Storage Pools.

You can observe real-time virtual machine (VM) distribution across zones, machine types, and instance states in your managed instance groups (MIGs) by using the GCE MIG Instance Distribution Monitoring dashboard in Cloud Monitoring. When your group uses location flexibility across zones, instance flexibility across machine types, or both, this visibility helps you monitor capacity allocation and diagnose runtime fallback behavior. For more information, see Monitor instance distribution in MIGs.

Generally available: You can configure a regional managed instance group (MIG) to allow a VM repair in an alternate zone when the MIG can't repair the VM in its original zone. Repairing a VM in an alternate zone can help to improve your application's resiliency and resource obtainability. For more information, see Repair a VM in an alternate zone.

Encrypting disks, snapshots, images, and machine images with customer-supplied encryption keys (CSEKs) is deprecated and will be disabled on July 20, 2027.

For more information and alternatives to CSEKs for your Compute Engine resources, see Deprecation of customer-supplied encryption keys (CSEK) in Compute Engine.

Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability volumes on C4 instances have increased performance limits for several machine types. For example, an instance that uses the c4-standard-16 machine type can reach up to 1,600 MiB/s of throughput, up from 600 MiB/s.

For detailed performance limits, see Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability performance limits when attached to an instance.

Changed: The following operations on the boot disk of a Compute Engine instance that has a service account attached no longer require the iam.serviceAccounts.actAs permission. In the following list, the boot disk of such an instance is referred to as the source disk.

• Creating a standard or archive snapshot of the source disk.
• Cloning the source disk.
• Creating a machine image of the instance.
• Creating a custom image of the source disk.
• Starting asynchronous replication of the source disk to another region.
• Creating a new disk when you create an instance, if the new disk is created from an instant snapshot of the source disk.

Preview: The network-optimized C4N machine series offers machine types with 375 GiB to 12,000 GiB of attached Titanium SSD.

To use C4N machine types with attached Local SSD disks, you can Request preview access.

For more information, see C4N machine series.

Preview: Advanced Compute Images provide high-performance images to support your artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads on Google Cloud.

Advanced Compute Images provide a single source of trusted, performance-tuned OS images that remove the need for manual image building for specialized workloads. Each image version is pre-installed with the necessary drivers, network fabrics, and Slurm agents to help you run your workloads.

Generally available: The network-optimized C4N machine series is generally available for Compute Engine and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) customers. Powered by 5th generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Emerald Rapids), C4N instances are purpose-built for network- and block storage-intensive workloads such as:

• Network and security appliances
• High-performance databases
• High-scale data analytics
• Distributed filesystems

The C4N machine series delivers the highest I/O performance available in Compute Engine, supporting up to 400 Gbps of network bandwidth and up to 95 million packets per second (Mpps) of sustained packet processing performance. C4N also offers leading block storage performance with Hyperdisk Extreme that scales up to 25 GiB/s of bandwidth and 1M IOPS. C4N instances are available in predefined machine shapes with three different vCPU to memory ratios, ranging in size from 2 to 192 vCPUs and up to 1,488 GB of DDR5 memory.

For C4N machine types with attached Local SSD disks, you can Request preview access.

For more information, see C4N machine series.

Generally available: You can cancel a future reservation request in calendar mode to prevent Compute Engine from provisioning your requested resources and incurring unnecessary charges. For more information, see Delete a future reservation request in calendar mode.

Generally available: In a managed instance group (MIG), you can use a health check to monitor your application health without triggering repairs for an unhealthy VM, if the application fails the health check. You can prevent the MIG from repairing an unhealthy VM by turning off autohealing. For more information, see Turn off repairs in a MIG.

Preview: You can use Gemini in the Google Cloud console as an AI-powered interface to evaluate hardware options, estimate deployment costs, and view recommended configurations for your Compute Engine instances. Prompting Gemini helps you reach an optimal configuration for your workload before you create or modify a compute instance. For more information, see Design your compute infrastructure with Gemini.

Generally available: You can create instances all at once in a regional managed instance group (MIG) by using resize requests. For more information, see About resize requests in a MIG.

Generally available: Resource-based committed use discount (CUD) recommendations are available for GPUs, Local SSD disks, and premium operating system (OS) licenses.

CUD recommendations provide insight into any additional commitments that you can purchase to optimize the costs of the resources that you run. You can use these recommendations and purchase commitments for resource usage that isn't covered by commitments and is being charged at list prices. Google Cloud analyzes your compute instance spending trends with and without a commitment and generates CUD recommendations on a monthly basis.

For more information about how CUD recommendations are generated, what resource types are supported, and how to use recommendations to purchase commitments, see Get recommendations for committed use discounts (CUDs).

For resource-based committed use discounts (CUDs), the default value of CUD scope for most Cloud Billing accounts has changed from Project to Billing account. If the CUD scope is set to Billing account, then resource-based CUDs from a commitment are shared across all projects in that account. If the CUD scope is set to Project, then resource-based CUDs from a commitment are available to only the project in which you purchased that commitment.

Depending on the Cloud Billing account's creation date and the active commitments in that account, this change applies in the following way:

• Cloud Billing accounts created on or after June 16, 2026: The CUD scope is Billing account (CUD sharing enabled) by default.
• Cloud Billing accounts created before June 16, 2026:
  • If the account has no active resource-based commitments on June 16, 2026, then the CUD scope has changed to Billing account (CUD sharing enabled).
  • If the account has any active resource-based commitments on June 16, 2026, then the CUD scope remains unchanged and Google Cloud continues to use your existing configuration.

For more information, see Share resource-based CUDs across projects.

Preview: Before you create Spot VMs, you can view the following information for a specific machine type and location:

• You can view the real-time obtainability and estimated uptime. This information helps you maximize your chances of successfully creating Spot VMs, as well as help ensure that your workload starts and runs efficiently.

• You can view historical and current preemption rate and pricing. This information helps you compare and choose the configuration that best fits your workload needs and budget.

For more information, see View the availability of Spot VMs and View the preemption rate and pricing for Spot VMs.