Create a Cloud TPU VM instance using Compute Engine

This document shows you how to create a single TPU VM with the Compute Engine gcloud compute instances create command. You can also create a TPU VM instance by specifying an instance template . For more information, see Create a VM from an instance template .

Prerequisites

Complete the following prerequisites:

1. Create a Google Cloud project for your TPUs as described in Set up a Google Cloud project for TPUs .

2. Determine your TPU requirements as described in Plan your Cloud TPU resources .

Create a TPU VM instance

The parameters you use to create a TPU VM instance depend on the consumption option you are using: on-demand, Spot, reservation-bound, or flex-start. For more information, see Plan your TPU resources .

Create an on-demand TPU VM instance

To create an on-demand TPU VM instance, use the gcloud compute instances create command :

   
gcloud  
compute  
instances  
create  
 TPU_NAME 
  
 \ 
  
--machine-type = 
 MACHINE_TYPE 
  
 \ 
  
--image-family = 
 IMAGE_FAMILY 
  
 \ 
  
--image-project = 
 IMAGE_PROJECT 
  
 \ 
  
--zone = 
 ZONE 
  
 \ 
  
--maintenance-policy = 
TERMINATE 

Replace the following placeholders:

• TPU_NAME : A name for your TPU VM.
• MACHINE_TYPE : The machine type for the TPU VM (for example ct6e-standard-8t ).
• IMAGE_FAMILY : The OS image family for the TPU VM. If you want to install a specific OS version, use the --image flag. For more information about OS images, see OS images .
• IMAGE_PROJECT : The project that contains the OS image. For TPU images, this is ubuntu-os-accelerator-images .
• ZONE : The zone for the TPU VM (for example us-central1-b ).

Create a TPU Spot VM instance

To create a TPU Spot VM instance, use the gcloud compute instances create command with the --provisioning-model=SPOT flag:

   
gcloud  
compute  
instances  
create  
 TPU_NAME 
  
 \ 
  
--machine-type = 
 MACHINE_TYPE 
  
 \ 
  
--image-family = 
 IMAGE_FAMILY 
  
 \ 
  
--image-project = 
 IMAGE_PROJECT 
  
 \ 
  
--zone = 
 ZONE 
  
 \ 
  
--provisioning-model = 
SPOT  
 \ 
  
--instance-termination-action = 
DELETE  
 \ 
  
--maintenance-policy = 
TERMINATE 

Replace the following placeholders:

• TPU_NAME : A name for your TPU VM.
• MACHINE_TYPE : The machine type for the TPU VM (for example ct6e-standard-8t ).
• IMAGE_FAMILY : The OS image family for the TPU VM. If you want to install a specific OS version, use the --image flag. For more information about OS images, see OS images .
• IMAGE_PROJECT : The project that contains the OS image. For TPU images, this is ubuntu-os-accelerator-images .
• ZONE : The zone for the TPU VM (for example us-central1-b ).

Create a TPU VM instance using a reservation

To create a TPU VM instance using the reservation-bound consumption option, use the gcloud compute instances create command with the --reservation-affinity=specific and --reservation flags:

   
gcloud  
compute  
instances  
create  
 TPU_NAME 
  
 \ 
  
--machine-type = 
 MACHINE_TYPE 
  
 \ 
  
--image-family = 
 IMAGE_FAMILY 
  
 \ 
  
--image-project = 
 IMAGE_PROJECT 
  
 \ 
  
--zone = 
 ZONE 
  
 \ 
  
--provisioning-model = 
reservation-bound  
 \ 
  
--reservation-affinity = 
specific  
 \ 
  
--reservation = 
 RESERVATION_NAME 
  
 \ 
  
--instance-termination-action = 
DELETE  
 \ 
  
--maintenance-policy = 
TERMINATE 

Replace the following placeholders:

• TPU_NAME : A name for your TPU VM.
• MACHINE_TYPE : The machine type for the TPU VM (for example ct6e-standard-8t ).
• IMAGE_FAMILY : The OS image family for the TPU VM. If you want to install a specific OS version, use the --image flag. For more information about OS images, see OS images .
• IMAGE_PROJECT : The project that contains the OS image. For TPU images, this is ubuntu-os-accelerator-images .
• ZONE : The zone for the TPU VM (for example us-central1-b ).
• RESERVATION_NAME : The name of your reservation.

Create a TPU Flex-start VM

To create a TPU Flex-start VM instance, use the gcloud compute instances create command with the --provisioning-model=FLEX_START flag:

   
gcloud  
compute  
instances  
create  
 TPU_NAME 
  
 \ 
  
--machine-type = 
 MACHINE_TYPE 
  
 \ 
  
--image-family = 
 IMAGE_FAMILY 
  
 \ 
  
--image-project = 
 IMAGE_PROJECT 
  
 \ 
  
--zone = 
 ZONE 
  
 \ 
  
--provisioning-model = 
FLEX_START  
 \ 
  
--max-run-duration = 
 MAX_RUN_DURATION 
  
 \ 
  
--request-valid-for-duration = 
 VALID_DURATION 
  
 \ 
  
--instance-termination-action = 
DELETE  
 \ 
  
--maintenance-policy = 
TERMINATE 

Replace the following placeholders:

• TPU_NAME : A name for your TPU VM.
• MACHINE_TYPE : The machine type for the TPU VM (for example ct6e-standard-8t ).
• IMAGE_FAMILY : The OS image family for the TPU VM. If you want to install a specific OS version, use the --image flag. For more information about OS images, see OS images .
• IMAGE_PROJECT : The project that contains the OS image. For TPU images, this is ubuntu-os-accelerator-images .
• ZONE : The zone for the TPU VM (for example us-central1-b ).
• MAX_RUN_DURATION : The maximum run duration for the TPU VM (for example 6h ).
• VALID_DURATION : The maximum duration for which the request is valid.

For more information about creating Compute Engine instances, see Create and start a Compute Engine instance .

What's next

• Learn how to Create a MIG with single-host Cloud TPU slices .
• Learn how to Create a MIG with a multi-host Cloud TPU slice .
• Learn how to manage TPU VMs .
• Learn about TPUs in GKE .
• Learn how to run an ML workload on TPUs, for example, Serve Qwen2-72B-Instruct with vLLM on TPUs .