Create a workstation cluster

Learn how to get started creating a workstation cluster with Cloud Workstations.

To follow step-by-step guidance for this task directly in the Google Cloud console, click Guide me:

Guide me

Before you begin

Before you begin using Cloud Workstations, be sure that you have the required permissions and that you complete these required setup steps. You can skip this section if you've already completed this setup.

  1. Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

  2. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Go to project selector

  3. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  4. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Go to project selector

  5. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  6. Enable the Cloud Workstations API.

    Enable the API

  7. Make sure that you have a Cloud Workstations Admin IAM role on the project so that you can create workstation configurations. To check your IAM roles in the Google Cloud console, go to the IAM page:

    Go to IAM

  8. Cloud Workstations are hosted on VMs booted from Compute Engine's preconfigured public Container-Optimized OS (COS) images. If the constraints/compute.trustedimageProjects organization policy constraint is enforced, you must set image access constraints to allow users to create boot disks from projects/cos-cloud or all public images.
  9. Optional: Enable the Container File System API to allow faster workstation startup.

    Enable the Container File System API

    For more information, see Reduce workstation startup time with Image streaming.

Create your workstation cluster

Workstation clusters define a group of workstations in a particular region, manage workstations during their lifecycle, and provide configurable network connectivity.

Workstation clusters aren't related to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters.

To create a workstation cluster, follow these steps:

  1. In the console, navigate to the Cloud Workstations > Cluster management page.

    Go to Cluster management

  2. From the workstations Cluster management page, click add_boxCreate.

  3. In the Name field, enter a name for your workstation cluster.

  4. Select the Region that is closest to you.

  5. Optional: To create your workstations inside a VPC, expand the Network settings section and select your custom network.

    1. In the Network field, enter the name for your network—for example, test-network.

    2. In the Subnetwork field, enter the name for your subnetwork—for example, test-subnetwork.

    3. In the Gateway type section, select Public gateway or Private gateway.

      • To make your workstations accessible from public networks, select Public gateway.

      • If you require data residency for data in transit, select Private gateway.

      • To allow ingress and egress to the workstations service from inside the selected network, select Private gateway. For more information about creating a private clusters, see Configure VPC Service Controls and private clusters

  6. Click Create, which begins the cluster creation process.

Workstation cluster creation can take up to 20 minutes, but in most cases is only needed once.

Clean up

To delete a workstation cluster from the Google Cloud console:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to Cloud Workstations > Clusters.
  2. Select the checkbox beside the cluster that you want to delete.
  3. Click themore_vertMore options menu and select Delete to delete the selected workstation cluster.
For more about deleting workstations, workstation configurations, and Google Cloud projects, see Delete resources.

What's next