Guided Lab: Creating a VM Using Instance Templates

Jon-Bonso

Description

Instance Templates in Google Cloud allow you to define reusable configurations for virtual machine (VM) instances. An instance template captures settings such as machine type, boot disk image, networking, metadata, startup scripts, and service accounts, enabling you to create multiple VMs with consistent configurations quickly and reliably.

Instance templates are commonly used with managed instance groups (MIGs) to support scalability, high availability, and automated updates, but they can also be used to create individual VM instances. By standardizing VM configurations, instance templates reduce configuration errors, improve operational efficiency, and make infrastructure easier to manage.

In this guided lab, you’ll learn how to create an instance template and use it to launch a Compute Engine VM, helping you understand how templates simplify VM provisioning and enforce consistency.

Objectives

In this lab, you will:

Create a Compute Engine instance template
Review the configuration options included in an instance template
Use the instance template to create a VM instance

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Lab Steps

Navigating to Google Cloud Instance Template

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the unified search bar at the top.

2. Type “Instance” and select “Instance templates” from the results.

3. The Instance template page will show up. To start configuring your own instance template, click the “Create instance template” either in the top menu bar or in the middle of the page.

Creating an Instance Template

On the Create instance template page, configure the following:

Name: <your preferred instance template name>
Location: Regional only
Region: us-central1 only

Machine types: e2-micro. You can only choose any of the following below:
- e2-micro
- e2-small
- e2-medium
- n1-standard-1
- f1-micro
- g1-small

You can leave the boot disk configuration as it is, but if you want to change it, click the Change button. The boot disk configuration will show up in the right-hand sidebar
For this guided lab, we will configure the boot disk with the following
- Operating System: Ubuntu (you can select any of the Operating systems)
- Version: Ubuntu 25.10 Minimal (or the latest Ubuntu version available)
- Size: 20 GB (can only configure it up to 20 GB only)
- Once done, click the Done button

You can see in the right side of the screen the monthly estimated cost of your instance template’s current configuration. You can change the details if you want to make it cheaper or according to your expected budget.

Review the remaining settings and keep the defaults unless otherwise specified. Once done, click Create.

Creating a VM from the Instance Template

Wait until the instance template is created. You can check the service page or the notifications in the upper-right corner to see if it was created successfully.

Option 1: Through the Instance templates page

To create a VM using the instance template, select the newly created instance template (click the checkbox next to it), then click Create VM in the top menu bar of the page.

Review the VM configuration inherited from the template.
Click Create to launch the VM, and wait for it to be created.

Option 2: Through the VM instances page

You can also create another one through the VM instances page. Let’s create the second VM here by clicking the Create instance button in the top menu bar.

In the VM configuration page, click the Create VM from… at the top menu bar, then select Instance templates

The Create VM from template page will popup in the righthand sidebar. Select the instance template we created earlier then click Create to start creating the VM or you can click Customize if you want to change some of the details such as the name of the VM instance.

Once done, you can see the two VMs we created using the instance template. Instead of configuring the two VMs one by one, we were able to create the two VMs in quick succession using the instance template we created.

Congratulations! You’ve successfully created an instance template and used it to launch a virtual machine in Google Cloud. This simple guided lab helps you become familiar with instance templates and how they streamline VM creation through reusable, consistent configurations. In future guided labs, we’ll build on this by using instance templates with managed instance groups to explore autoscaling, rolling updates, and high availability.