Use Gemini Cloud Assist in the Google Cloud console

This document describes how to get AI-powered assistance from the Cloud Assist panel in the Google Cloud console.

The Cloud Assist panel lets you write natural language statements or questions (called prompts) to get in-depth explanations, suggested actions, or guided workflows that help you complete tasks quickly and efficiently without needing to be a cloud expert. While in Preview, there is no cost for using this panel.

Learn how and when Gemini for Google Cloud uses your data.

Before you begin

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

    Go to project selector

  2. Ensure that Gemini Cloud Assist is set up for your Google Cloud project.

Open and close the Cloud Assist panel

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to any page—for example, the Dashboard page.

    Go to Dashboard

  2. In the Google Cloud console toolbar, click spark Open or close Gemini Cloud Assist chat.

    The Cloud Assist panel opens. You can click example prompts if they are displayed, or you can enter a prompt in the Enter a prompt field.

You can manage the Cloud Assist panel in several ways:

  • To expand the Cloud Assist panel to the full width of your browser window, click open_in_new Open in full page.

    The Cloud Assist panel opens in a new tab. Your original session remains open in the original tab. To close the expanded view, close the tab.

  • To close the Cloud Assist panel, click spark Open or close Gemini Cloud Assist chat. If you don't choose to turn on conversation history, your conversation history remains active until you change projects or sign out of the Google Cloud console. To re-open the Cloud Assist panel, click spark Open or close Gemini Cloud Assist chat.

A quick example of entering a prompt in the Cloud Assist panel

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to any page—for example, the Dashboard page.

    Go to Dashboard

  2. In the Google Cloud console toolbar, click spark Open or close Gemini Cloud Assist chat.

  3. In the Cloud Assist panel, in the Enter a prompt field, enter the following prompt, and then click send Send prompt:

    Create a gcloud command to give the developer Google group
access to view my Google Cloud project.

    In the Cloud Assist panel, a response is displayed.

  4. In the Enter a prompt field, send a follow-up prompt:

    Change that to editor access.

    Gemini Cloud Assist uses your conversation history for additional context when it responds to your prompts. For example, Gemini responds with an updated explanation and command.

  5. Optional: If the Show related content link is visible, click the link to access more information. The link is only displayed when more information is available.

Chat panel use cases

The following sections detail additional Cloud Assist panel use cases.

Access product knowledge and best practices

Gemini Cloud Assist can access up to date information on Google Cloud products and best practices for using them. It can help you compare different Google Cloud products and select the right one. It can also provide advice for configuring and using Google Cloud products in an effective, efficient, and compliant manner. Try some of the following prompts:

  • What is Secret Manager?
  • What is the difference between Cloud Run and Cloud Functions?
  • When should I use a managed instance group?
  • What are some best practices for using KMS?
  • What storage class should I use for my data?
  • Help me choose a regulatory control for my Google Cloud folders.

Limitations: Due to the number of factors that can influence cost and pricing, Gemini Cloud Assist generally doesn't provide service pricing data in chat. For pricing information, visit a service's pricing page directly.

Inspect your cloud resources, applications, and data

Gemini Cloud Assist can access information inside your cloud environment. This section shows how to ask Gemini Cloud Assist about resource configuration and metrics. It also shows how it can help query data in BigQuery or a Google Cloud database.

Understand resources, policies, and recent changes

To understand resources, policies, and recent changes, try some of the following prompts:

  • What are the names of my instances and their private interface names?
  • List the name and network name for the subnetworks.
  • How many BigQuery datasets have a label whose value is "inventory"?
  • List all config changes in the last 24 hours.
  • When was my key last rotated?
  • List all users granted roles/bigquery.admin and include the attached resources.

In addition to providing the information requested, Gemini Cloud Assist provides you with an equivalent query you can run yourself to verify the results.

Limitations: Because Cloud Asset Inventory requires the presence of an organization, using Gemini Cloud Assist to access Cloud Asset Inventory to understand deployed assets and their recent changes also requires an organization. Furthermore, when you first submit a prompt that uses the Gemini Cloud Assist, Gemini Cloud Assist can take several minutes to set up a query environment. If your query fails, then wait a few minutes and try again.

Analyze resource performance

To get a quick analysis of the performance trends of resources such as traffic, throughput, and executions, try some of the following prompts:

  • Which of my VMs have the highest utilization?
  • What are the top 5 dataflow jobs with the highest estimated backlog processing time?
  • Total VM network bytes sent per second for each instance?
  • What's the QPS on my SQL databases?

Limitations: Due to the number of factors that can influence cost and pricing, Gemini Cloud Assist generally doesn't provide cost data. For information about your cost or bill, visit the FinOps hub.

If you have a Storage Intelligence subscription and the Storage Insights Viewer role to access Storage Insights datasets, then you can send prompts about your specific buckets and objects, while you're on the corresponding Google Cloud console storage page. For example, you can send the following prompts:

  • How many bytes are stored in my buckets in the us-central1 location?
  • What is my Cloud Storage usage, broken down by content type?
  • How many objects do I have in Standard storage smaller than 50 GB?

Help with BigQuery datasets

To get help with the configurations of your BigQuery datasets, try the following prompt: How many BigQuery datasets have a label whose value is 'inventory'?

Additionally, when you are on a BigQuery page in the Google Cloud console, you can ask for help with writing a SQL query in the Cloud Assist panel. For example, if you had a dataset with ride-sharing service data you might enter the following prompt: Generate a SQL query to show me the direction and subscriber type for the 10 longest trips.

In this example, Gemini Cloud Assist provides a specific SQL query that you can review and copy into the BigQuery query editor. You can also ask for help querying your data using Python, for example you could prompt Gemini Cloud Assist to Generate Python code to query the bigquery-public-data.ml_datasets.penguins table using BigQuery magics.

Help with databases

To get help with your database deployments, try the following prompts:

  • Where are my databases located?
  • Show me all databases running on Postgres.
  • How many databases do I have in the US?

While you're on a Google Cloud console page for a specific Cloud SQL database instance, you can also ask for database performance information and for help troubleshooting potential issues. For example, What is the current CPU utilization of this database?.

Design and deploy Google Cloud applications

This section details a few examples to help design and deploy your Google Cloud applications.

Ask for help creating resources

You can ask Gemini Cloud Assist for help creating resources or policies using either Google Cloud CLI commands or Terraform, and Gemini Cloud Assist will reply with a snippet of code that you can copy into your shell or IaC repository. For example:

  • How do I use Google Cloud CLI to execute a Cloud Run job and set the timeout to 20 minutes?
  • I want to grant the user "user@company.com" the "Security Administrator" role for the "prod-subnet" subnet for project "xyz-123". What Google Cloud CLI command can I use?
  • Give me a Terraform configuration to create an Enterprise Plus Postgresql database instance with data caching.

Create a new application

You can ask Gemini Cloud Assist for help creating an application. For example: Help me create a three tier web application for a new CMS system.

In addition to providing some suggestions for getting started and a proposed architecture, Gemini Cloud Assist will provide a link to start building he application in the Application Design Center. This lets you transfer the context of this prompt and response directly to Google Cloud visual application design experience.

Additionally, Gemini Cloud Assist paid tier users are able to use natural language in the Cloud Assist panel with the Application Design Center to iteratively update their application architecture.

Investigate and troubleshoot issues

You can use the Cloud Assist panel to get help from Gemini Cloud Assist with initial steps investigating and troubleshooting issues with your applications.

Check for Google Cloud incidents impacting your project

To check for Google Cloud incidents impacting your project, try some of the following prompts:

  • Is there something going on with Google Cloud? I'm seeing issues with my project.
  • What's the latest update on the Compute Engine outage in us-central1?
  • How is my project impacted by the Cloud Storage incident?
  • Is there a workaround for the BigQuery incident?

Investigate database issues

To help understanding potential database, including performance, health, and compliance, try some of the following prompts:

  • What is the current CPU utilization of this database?
  • Which of my queries have high latency for this database instance?
  • What is the slowest query for this database in this instance?
  • How many error log entries are there for this database instance?
  • What issues are affecting my databases?
  • What databases have NIST issues in Europe?

Optimize Google Cloud resources

To help optimize your Google Cloud resources and get specific recommendations for estimated savings and cluster reliability, try the following prompts:

  • Give me recommendations to reduce my resource costs.
  • What are all the quotas for my project that are almost hitting the limit?
  • What BigQuery datasets should I partition or cluster?
  • Which of my VMs are idle?

Clear your chat session

To clear the chat session history, in the Cloud Assist panel, click Clear chat.

Get conversational assistance outside of the console

To use the Cloud Assist pane in an integrated development environment (IDE) instead of the Google Cloud console, set up Gemini Code Assist in your IDE.

To chat with Cloud Storage in your IDE, click spark Open or close Gemini Cloud Assist chat.

Limitations

If you set up Gemini Cloud Assist for a folder and are using the Cloud Assist panel at the folder level in the Google Cloud console, then assistance and responses are limited to applications related to the folder for products that support applications. The following list includes Google Cloud products supported at the folder level:

To get assistance on other products and resources, use project picker at the top of the Google Cloud console page to select a project resource.

Additionally, you must enable application management on the folder to use the Cloud Assist panel at the folder level.

What's next