Create VMs in bulk

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This document explains how to create virtual machine (VM) instances that are deployed on Hypercompute Cluster. For more information about creating VMs in bulk, see About bulk creation of VMs in the Compute Engine documentation.

After you request blocks of resources and Compute Engine provisions them, you can start consuming these blocks by creating VMs in bulk. This is useful for managing groups of VMs and incorporating your own workload scheduler.

To learn about other ways to create VMs or clusters, see the Overview page.

Before you begin

• Select the tab for how you plan to use the samples on this page:

  gcloudREST

  In the Google Cloud console, activate Cloud Shell.

  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.

  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:

  gcloud init

  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.

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to create VMs in bulk, 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 VMs in bulk. To see the exact permissions that are required, expand the Required permissions section:

You might also be able to get these permissions with custom roles or other predefined roles.

Optional: Create a compact placement policy

When you apply compact placement policies to your VMs, Compute Engine makes best-effort attempts to create VMs as close to each other as possible. If you require a minimum compactness to minimize network latency, then specify the maxDistance field when creating a placement policy. A lower maxDistance value ensures closer VM placement, but it also increases the chance that some VMs won't be created.

The following table shows the machine series and number of VMs that each maxDistance value supports:

gcloud beta compute resource-policies create group-placement POLICY_NAME \
    --collocation=collocated \
    --max-distance=MAX_DISTANCE \
    --region=REGION

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION/resourcePolicies
  {
    "name": "POLICY_NAME",
    "groupPlacementPolicy": {
      "collocation": "COLLOCATED",
      "maxDistance": MAX_DISTANCE
    }
  }

Create VPC networks

Based on the machine type that you want to use and the number of network interfaces in the machine type, you need to create Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) networks as follows:

Set up the networks either manually by following the instruction guides or automatically by using the provided script.

  #!/bin/bash

  # Create standard VPCs (network and subnets) for the gVNICs
  for N in $(seq 0 1); do
    gcloud beta compute networks create GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-net-$N \
      --subnet-mode=custom

    gcloud beta compute networks subnets create GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-sub-$N \
      --network=GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-net-$N \
      --region=REGION \
      --range=10.$N.0.0/16

    gcloud beta compute firewall-rules create GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-internal-$N \
      --network=GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-net-$N \
      --action=ALLOW \
      --rules=tcp:0-65535,udp:0-65535,icmp \
      --source-ranges=10.0.0.0/8
  done

  # Create SSH firewall rules
  gcloud beta compute firewall-rules create GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-ssh \
    --network=GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-net-0 \
    --action=ALLOW \
    --rules=tcp:22 \
    --source-ranges=IP_RANGE

  # Assumes that an external IP is only created for vNIC 0
  gcloud beta compute firewall-rules create GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-allow-ping-net-0 \
    --network=GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-net-0 \
    --action=ALLOW \
    --rules=icmp \
    --source-ranges=IP_RANGE

  # List and make sure network profiles exist
  gcloud beta compute network-profiles list

  # Create network for CX-7
  gcloud beta compute networks create RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma \
    --network-profile=ZONE-vpc-roce \
    --subnet-mode custom

  # Create subnets.
  for N in $(seq 0 7); do
    gcloud beta compute networks subnets create RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma-sub-$N \
      --network=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma \
      --region=REGION \
      --range=10.$((N+2)).0.0/16  # offset to avoid overlap with gVNICs
  done
  

Create VMs

To create your VMs in bulk, use one of the following methods:

gcloud beta compute instances bulk create \
    --name-pattern=NAME_PATTERN \
    --count=COUNT \
    --machine-type=MACHINE_TYPE \
    --image-family=IMAGE_FAMILY \
    --image-project=IMAGE_PROJECT \
    --reservation-affinity=specific \
    --reservation=RESERVATION \
    --provisioning-model=RESERVATION_BOUND \
    --instance-termination-action=DELETE \
    --region=REGION \
    --boot-disk-type=hyperdisk-balanced \
    --boot-disk-size=DISK_SIZE \
    --scopes=cloud-platform \
    --network-interface=nic-type=GVNIC,network=GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-net-0,subnet=GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-sub-0 \
    --network-interface=nic-type=GVNIC,network=GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-net-1,subnet=GVNIC_NAME_PREFIX-sub-1,no-address \
    --network-interface=nic-type=MRDMA,network=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma,subnet=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma-sub-0,no-address \
    --network-interface=nic-type=MRDMA,network=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma,subnet=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma-sub-1,no-address \
    --network-interface=nic-type=MRDMA,network=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma,subnet=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma-sub-2,no-address \
    --network-interface=nic-type=MRDMA,network=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma,subnet=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma-sub-3,no-address \
    --network-interface=nic-type=MRDMA,network=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma,subnet=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma-sub-4,no-address \
    --network-interface=nic-type=MRDMA,network=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma,subnet=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma-sub-5,no-address \
    --network-interface=nic-type=MRDMA,network=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma,subnet=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma-sub-6,no-address \
    --network-interface=nic-type=MRDMA,network=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma,subnet=RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-mrdma-sub-7,no-address

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION/instances/bulkInsert
  {
    {
      "namePattern":"NAME_PATTERN",
      "count":"COUNT",
      "instanceProperties":{
         "machineType":"MACHINE_TYPE",
         "disks":[
            {
               "boot":true,
               "initializeParams":{
                  "diskSizeGb":"DISK_SIZE",
                  "diskType":"hyperdisk-balanced",
                  "sourceImage":"projects/IMAGE_PROJECT/global/images/family/IMAGE_FAMILY"
               },
               "mode":"READ_WRITE",
               "type":"PERSISTENT"
            }
         ],
         "name":"default",
         "networkInterfaces":[
            {
               "network":"NETWORK",
               "nicType":"GVNIC"
            }
         ],
         "reservationAffinity":{
            "consumeReservationType":"SPECIFIC_RESERVATION",
            "key":"compute.googleapis.com/reservation-name",
            "values":[
               "RESERVATION"
            ],
            "scheduling":{
               "provisioningModel":"RESERVATION_BOUND",
               "instanceTerminationAction":"DELETE",
               "automaticRestart":true
            }
         }
      }
   }
  }

  "resourcePolicies": [
    "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION/resourcePolicies/POLICY_NAME"
  ],

For more information about the configuration options when creating VMs in bulk, see Create VMs in bulk in the Compute Engine documentation.

What's next

• Run workloads overview

• Troubleshoot reservation consumption

• View VMs topology