How to use Google Cloud Server for Free

Thanks to the GCP service provided by Google (Google Cloud Platform, Google Cloud Platform Service), when you register and activate GCP for the first time, you will receive a 12-month trial period and a $300 credit.

1. Register GCP 

Go to "Google Cloud Platform" https://cloud.google.com and select Free Trial. When registering, please note that the country/region can no longer be selected from China. You can choose Taiwan or Hong Kong, and you can write the address as you like. You need to bind a credit card here. $1 will be deducted upon activation, but will be refunded after successful authentication. After successful registration, you will get a $300 experience fee, which is valid for one year. 

2. Create an instance

Find Computer Engine --> Virtual Machine Instances in the menu on the left and create a new virtual machine by creating an instance or clicking the plus sign.

1. Name: Random

2. Region/region: 

It is recommended to select Taiwan asia-east1-c, or Hong Kong/Singapore/Japan node, which is more friendly to the mainland. The model series provided in different regions will be slightly different. For details, please check:

https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/regions-zones?hl=en_US

3. Machine series:

N1/N2/E2, please check the specific differences:

https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/machine-types?hl=zh_CN, if it is used to learn to build SSR, I recommend choosing E2-->e2-micro, which can take into account performance and price.

machine type 

Each machine type family contains different machine types. Each series is a curated series for a specific workload type. Compute Engine offers the following main machine types:

> * General purpose machine type offers the best price/performance for a wide range of workloads.

 > * The N1 machine type provides up to 96 vCPUs with up to 6.5 GB of memory per vCPU, supporting CPU platforms such as Intel Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Broadwell, Skylake, etc.

 > * The N2 machine type offers up to 80 vCPUs with up to 8 GB of memory per vCPU, supporting Intel Cascade Lake CPU platforms.

> * E2 machine types are cost-optimized virtual machines that provide up to 16 vCPUs and up to 8 GB of memory per vCPU. E2 machines have predefined CPU platforms running Intel or AMD EPYC processors. E2 virtual machines can provide a variety of computing resources at the lowest price on Compute Engine.

> * Memory-optimized machine types are ideal for memory-intensive workloads because they offer higher memory per core, up to 12 TB, compared to other machine types.

> * Compute-optimized machine types deliver the highest single-core performance on Compute Engine and are optimized for compute-intensive workloads.Compute-optimized machine types offer Intel Scalable processors (Cascade Lake) and sustained all-core turbo frequencies up to 3.8 GHz. 

> * N1 and E2 series offer shared core machine types. These machine types time-share a single physical core. Using shared-core machine types is a more cost-effective approach when running small-scale, non-resource-intensive applications.

> * N1: `f1-micro` and `g1-small` shared core machine types have up to 1 vCPU available for short bursts.

> * E2: The `e2-micro`, `e2-small` and `e2-medium` shared core machine types have two vCPUs available for short bursts.
 

4. Startup Disk: 

Click Change, choose Debian or Ubuntu, depending on your preference.

5. Firewall :

Please check Allow HTTP traffic and allow HTTPS traffic.

3. Network configuration

Find the following options in the upper left navigation bar to adjust the network:

1. VPC Network -- External IP Address: 

The type of IP address is adjusted from "Temporary" to "Static".

2. Firewall Rules -- Create firewall rules (all defaults not mentioned):

Traffic Direction ~ Inbound, Destination ~ All instances in the network, Source IP Address ~ 0.0.0.0/0, Protocol and Port ~ All Allowed.

3. Firewall Rules--Create firewall rules (all defaults not mentioned):

Traffic direction ~ outbound, destination ~ all instances in the network, source ip address ~ 0.0.0.0/0, protocol and port ~ allow all.

4. Create firewalls:

Note that you need to create two firewall rules, one for outbound and one for inbound. Fourth, learn to configure SSR and BBR .

2023 Update : check Google cloud servers