Google Cloud Platform

This page covers how to request your Google Cloud Education credits and set up a Google Compute Engine (GCE) virtual machine instance for the course.

Each student receives $50 in credits for use during the semester. Please use the resources judiciously. Adding additional credits is difficult. When you sign up for GCP the first time, you may also receive additional credits from Google.

Google Cloud Platform

Requesting Your Google Cloud Credits

You must use your UF email address (@ufl.edu or @cise.ufl.edu) to request a coupon.

Visit the Student Coupon Retrieval Link.
Enter your name and your UF email address.
A confirmation email will be sent to you with a coupon code.
Follow the instructions in the email to redeem your coupon.

Important details:

You can request a coupon and redeem it until: May 27, 2026
Coupon valid through: January 27, 2027
You can only request one code per unique email address
If you have issues, contact the professor

Redeeming Your Coupon

After you receive your coupon code by email, go to https://console.cloud.google.com/education. Fill out the required fields and read the terms and conditions. If you agree, click the blue ACCEPT AND CONTINUE button.

Credits page screenshot.

You may receive a verification email. Follow the instructions within. You can verify your credits by going to the billing menu (make sure you select the right billing account) as seen in the screenshot below.

Billing verification.

Setting Up SSH

You will connect to Google Cloud through a terminal or shell using SSH.

Installation

Windows users should set up the Windows Subsystem for Linux. This will allow you to follow the same instructions as macOS and Linux users, since most distributions come with SSH already installed.

Windows users can also look into PuTTY and its documentation.

Key Generation

Check if you already have a public key:

ls ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

If the file does not exist, create a key pair by running ssh-keygen. It is okay to use an empty passphrase, but doing so means your private key is unencrypted. This is often acceptable since it is stored on your local machine only, but is a problem if your laptop is compromised.

Creating a Google Cloud Project

Go to https://console.cloud.google.com and sign in. You will land on a dashboard page. Create a new project for the course.

Make sure that the billing account you redeemed your credits on is the one selected for the project. This is the default setting. If you already had projects from a previous course, you will need to swap the billing account to the one you just redeemed credit towards.

Project Creation. Billing account.

Cloud Shell

You can access a quick terminal by clicking the terminal icon towards the top right corner of the console. Your screen will split in half and you will have a working cloud shell. This is not the virtual machine instance you need for the course. Continue reading for instructions on how to create the virtual machine instance.

Shell screenshot.

Creating Your Virtual Machine Instance

Create the Instance

Navigate to Top left hamburger menu > Compute Engine > VM instances.

VM instance creation.

Click on the blue CREATE INSTANCE button.

Create VM.

Use the defaults, but change the following:

Machine type: e2-micro (this is changeable later)
Boot disk: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (x86/64)
Firewall: Allow HTTP and HTTPS traffic
Region: us-east1-b
API access: All full access to all Cloud APIs

VM template.

The e2-micro (1 GB, 2 shared vCPU) instance will be cheap but not free. You can change to a more expensive instance if you would like, but you must be diligent about turning it off when not in use to preserve your credits.

Set your zone to us-east1-b. The closest Google Cloud zone to Gainesville, Florida is us-east1, located in Moncks Corner, South Carolina.

**You may need to increase the system size for different tasks. It is important that you monitor your usage. Shut down the instance when not in use.**

Boot Disk Settings

Click on the “Change” button. A side panel appears.
Set Operating System to Ubuntu (default is Debian).
Set Version to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
Disk Type: Standard Persistent Disk
Size: 30 GB
Press “Select” to save settings and close the menu.

Boot disk settings.

Click the CREATE button.

After the instance is created, select it from the INSTANCES list and stop it if it is running. You can view your instances at: https://console.cloud.google.com/compute/instances

VM instance stop.

Reserving an External Static IP

Click on the hyperlinked name of your VM instance from the INSTANCES list. Click EDIT next to the “VM instance details” heading.

Edit VM instance.

Scroll down to the “Network interface” menu. Press the pencil icon in the top right of the “Network Interface” box. In the “External IPv4 address” field, select “Create IP address”. Fill out the fields and click RESERVE.

Reserve menu.

Scroll all the way down and click the blue SAVE button.

Configure SSH Keys

On the same edit page, scroll down to the “SSH keys” section under Security and Access.
Run cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub on your local machine to print your public key. You can also run xclip -sel clip < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub to copy it to the clipboard. (The filename of your .pub file may vary.)
Click ADD ITEM and paste the contents into the Enter public SSH key field. Make sure you do not paste any additional newline or whitespace characters.
Scroll down and click SAVE.

SSH public key.

Connecting to Your Virtual Machine

There are two ways to connect to your Google Cloud VM.

Browser Interface

Navigate to the INSTANCES list and start the machine.

Start the VM.

Click on the SSH menu under the “Connect” column and select “Open in browser window”.

SSH in browser.

A pop-up window should appear with a terminal into your VM instance.

Terminal.

Your Personal Machine

Open a terminal and run:

ssh -i PATH_TO_PRIVATE_KEY USERNAME@EXTERNAL_IP

PATH_TO_PRIVATE_KEY is likely ~/.ssh/id_rsa. If the file extension is .pub, that is your public key, not your private key.
USERNAME is the username specified in your public key. This is not your Google username.
EXTERNAL_IP is the IP shown in the INSTANCES list under the “External IP” column.

Enter the passphrase if prompted.

SSH on personal machine.

Configuring Your Virtual Machine

System Packages

Update and install necessary packages:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install -y emacs vim htop tmux tree ranger glances
sudo apt install -y gcc gdb make
sudo apt install -y build-essential libffi-dev
sudo apt install -y libsqlite3-dev sqlite3 bzip2 libbz2-dev
sudo apt install -y libssl-dev openssl libgdbm-dev libgdbm-compat-dev
sudo apt install -y liblzma-dev libreadline-dev libncursesw6 libncurses-dev uuid-dev
sudo apt install -y zlib1g-dev
sudo apt install -y ssh

Reboot after installation: sudo reboot now

Python and uv

This course uses uv for Python project management. Install it with:

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

After installation, restart your shell or run source $HOME/.local/bin/env. Verify the installation:

uv --version

You can use uv to manage Python versions directly:

uv python install 3.13

Docker

You may want to install Docker for certain assignments:

curl https://get.docker.com/ | bash
sudo groupadd docker
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
docker --version
systemctl status docker

Reboot after installation: sudo reboot now

GitHub

To use git on your instance, assign a global username and email:

git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "YourGithub@Email.com"

To use GitHub version control, you will need a Personal Access Token or configure SSH keys with GitHub. You cannot rely on your password for authentication with remote instances.

Remarks

For help setting up a VM instance or connecting to it, contact the TA. For help with coupon codes or Google credits, email the professor.

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