Preemptible VM in GCP: What It Is and When to Use It

A preemptible VM in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a short-lived, low-cost virtual machine that can be stopped by Google at any time after running for up to 24 hours. It is ideal for batch jobs or fault-tolerant workloads that can handle interruptions.

How It Works

Think of a preemptible VM like a rental car that you can use cheaply but must return when the owner needs it back. Google offers these VMs at a lower price because they can stop them anytime, usually when they need resources for other customers.

These VMs run just like regular virtual machines but have a maximum lifetime of 24 hours. If Google needs the resources, it will send a short warning before stopping the VM. This means your work might be interrupted, so preemptible VMs are best for tasks that can pause and resume or restart without problems.

Example

This example shows how to create a preemptible VM using the gcloud command-line tool.

bash

gcloud compute instances create example-preemptible-vm \
  --zone=us-central1-a \
  --machine-type=e2-medium \
  --preemptible \
  --image-family=debian-11 \
  --image-project=debian-cloud

Output

Created [https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/your-project/zones/us-central1-a/instances/example-preemptible-vm].

When to Use

Preemptible VMs are great when you want to save money and your work can handle interruptions. For example:

• Running batch processing jobs like data analysis or video rendering.
• Performing large-scale simulations that can restart if stopped.
• Testing or development environments where uptime is not critical.

They are not suitable for critical applications that need to run continuously without interruption.

Key Points

• Preemptible VMs cost less but can be stopped anytime within 24 hours.
• They receive a short warning before shutdown.
• Best for fault-tolerant and batch workloads.
• Cannot be used for long-running or critical services.

Key Takeaways

Preemptible VMs offer low-cost compute but can be stopped anytime within 24 hours.

They are ideal for batch jobs and workloads that tolerate interruptions.

Google sends a short warning before stopping the VM.

Not suitable for critical or long-running applications.

Use the --preemptible flag when creating VMs to enable this feature.