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Guest environment | Compute Engine Documentation

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When you start a virtual machine (VM) instance using Google-provided public images, a guest environment is automatically installed on the VM instance. The guest environment is a set of scripts, daemons, and binaries that read the content of the metadata server to make a VM run properly on Compute Engine. A metadata server is a communication channel for transferring information from a client to the guest operating system.

This document provides an overview of the components of the guest environment, supported operating systems, and explains how to learn when you need to manually install or update the guest environment.

VM instances created using Google-provided public images include a guest environment that is installed by default.

To check if the guest environment is running on your instance, see validate the guest environment.

In some cases, the installed guest environment can become outdated. If the guest environment is available on your instance but is outdated, update the guest environment.

Otherwise, you might need to manually install the guest environment under the following conditions:

• You are importing a custom image or a virtual disk to the Compute Engine platform and choosing not to allow an automatic installation of the guest environment.

  When you import virtual disks or custom images, you have the option of letting Compute Engine install the guest environment for you. However, if you choose not to install the guest environment during the import process, then, to install the guest environment, you must follow the manual steps.

• You are migrating VMs to Compute Engine using Migrate to Virtual Machines.

• You are using an image that doesn't have the guest environment optimizations for Local SSD disks.

• You have instances that are using an image that is earlier than v20141218.

If you need to manually install the guest environment, see Installing the guest environment.

Each supported operating system that is available on Compute Engine requires specific guest environment packages. Either Google or the owner of the operating system builds these packages. For information about who builds the guest environment packages, see the Notable differences from standard images sections in the Operating system details document.

Whether the Linux guest environment is built by Google or the owner of the operating system, there are some key components that are applicable to all builds.

The base components of a Linux guest environment are provided as deb or rpm packages that are created with the appropriate configurations for the supported distributions.

The following list summarizes the main scripts, daemons, and packages that are packaged in the Linux guest environment:

• The google-compute-engine package contains the following components:

  • System init scripts for systemd.
  • System configurations, such as udev rules, sysctl rules, rsyslog configs, and dhcp configs, that are used for hostname setting.
  • Bash scripts that run during instance boot.

  This package depends on the google-guest-agent and google-compute-engine-oslogin packages.

  As of October 2024, the google-compute-engine package contains a gce-resolved.conf file. This configuration file ensures that domain lookups for .local Cloud DNS domains are routed to the metadata server. Without this file, domain lookups are routed through systemd-resolved, which frequently fails.

  Note: If your environment doesn't use .local domains, you can remove this configuration file if it conflicts with your existing configurations.

  To review the source code for this package, see guest-configs on GitHub.

• The google-guest-agent package contains the guest agent and metadata script executables which runs on the guest OS to support the Compute Engine features. The following features are supported by the Linux guest agent:

  • Account management
  • OS Login integration
  • Clock skew
  • Network interface management
  • HTTPS metadata server endpoint
  • VM instance setup

  The Linux guest agent communicates with Compute Engine services as follows:

  • Reads data from and writes data to the VM metadata
  • Sends logs to the serial port and optionally Cloud Logging

  The Linux guest agent also collects telemetry data from the guest OS to use for analysis and debugging. The telemetry data includes: OS name, OS version, OS kernel release, OS kernel version, and OS agent version. To disable the collection of the telemetry data, set the following metadata at either the VM or project level: disable-guest-telemetry=TRUE.

  As of December 2024, the guest agent installs a secondary systemd unit named google-guest-agent-manager. This unit manages on demand plugins lifecycle.

  To review the source code for this package, see guest-agent on GitHub.

• The google-compute-engine-oslogin package contains the binaries, modules, and scripts for OS Login. You can use OS Login to manage access to VM instances using Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles.

  The package includes the following:

  • Authorized Keys Command, which provides SSH keys from the user's OS Login profile to sshd for authenticating users at login.
  • Name Service Switch (NSS) Modules, which provide support for making OS Login user and group information available to the system.
  • Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM), which provide authorization (and authentication if two-factor support is enabled) support that lets the system use Google Cloud IAM permissions to control whether the system can log into an instance or perform operations as root (with sudo).
  • google_oslogin_nss_cache, which is a utility for updating the local user and group cache.
  • selinux, which contains SELinux policy definition files and a compiled policy package for configuring SELinux to support OS Login.

  The OS Login components communicate with Compute Engine services as follows:

  • Read data from and write data to the VM metadata
  • Send logs to the serial port and optionally Cloud Logging

  To review the source code for this package, see guest-oslogin on GitHub.

• The gce-disk-expand components communicate with Compute Engine services as follows:

  • Sends logs to the serial port

  To review the source code for this package, see guest-diskexpand on GitHub.

• The google-osconfig-agent package contains OS Config agent that VM Manager uses to manage OS inventory, patches, and OS policies.

  The scripts communicate with Compute Engine services as follows:

  • Reads data from and writes data to the VM metadata
  • By default the OS Config agent does not collect or send any information until the OS Config agent is enabled. After you enable the agent, the agent communicates with the OS Config API service. To review the operations completed by the agent, see VM Manager audit logging.

  To review the source code for this agent, see osconfig on GitHub.

The following list summarizes the packages that are a part of the Windows guest environment:

• The google-compute-engine-windows package contains the Windows guest agent. The Windows guest agent is used to support the following processes:

  • Manage accounts and credentials on Windows VMs
  • Configuring the network interface
  • Querying metadata by using the HTTPS metadata server endpoint
  • Providing Windows Failover Cluster Support

  The Windows guest agent communicates with Compute Engine services as follows: + Reads data from and writes data to the VM metadata + Sends logs to the Windows Application Event Log, serial port, and Cloud Logging

  The Windows guest agent also collects telemetry data from the guest OS to use for analysis and debugging. The telemetry data includes: OS name, OS version, OS kernel release, OS kernel version, and OS agent version. To disable the collection of the telemetry data, set the following metadata at either the VM or project level: disable-guest-telemetry=TRUE.

  As of December 2024, the guest agent installs a secondary system service named GCEAgentManager. This service manages on demand plugins lifecycle.

  To review the source code for this agent, see guest-agent on GitHub.

• The google-compute-engine-sysprep package contains scripts that are for generalizing a Windows instance in preparation for creating an image. The package also includes the instance_setup.ps1 script which is used on first boot to configure the new instance.

  The scripts communicate with Compute Engine services as follows:

  • Reads data from and writes data to the VM metadata
  • Sends logs to the Windows Application Event Log, and serial port

  To review the source code for this agent, see compute-image-windows on GitHub

• The google-compute-engine-metadata-scripts package contains scripts and binaries that are used for running the Compute Engine, sysprep-specialize, startup and shutdown scripts.

  The scripts communicate with Compute Engine services as follows:

  • Reads data from and writes data to the VM metadata
  • Reads from Cloud Storage locations when the sysprep-specialize-script-url and windows-startup-script-url are used
  • Sends logs to the Windows Application Event Log, serial port, and Cloud Logging

  To review the source code for this agent, see compute-image-windows on GitHub

• The google-compute-engine-powershell package contains a PowerShell module. This module contains common functions that are used by PowerShell scripts in the other Windows Guest Environment scripts.

  The scripts communicates with the following Compute Engine services:

  • The logging function in the PowerShell module by default sends logs to the Windows Application Event Log and serial port.

  To review the source code for this agent, see compute-image-windows on GitHub.

• The google-compute-engine-auto-updater package contains scripts that are used for updating the Compute Engine packages daily. This package is no longer installed by default.

  The scripts communicate with Compute Engine services as follows:

  • Reads data from VM metadata
  • Calls the Googet agent to sends logs to the Windows Application Event Log and console

  To review the source code for this agent, see compute-image-windows on GitHub.

• The google-compute-engine-diagnostics package contains a binary that is used to collect diagnostic information from the instance and saves the information to a Cloud Storage bucket. The binary is executed by the Windows guest agent.

  The scripts communicate with Compute Engine services as follows:

  • Saves data to a Cloud Storage bucket

  To review the source code for this agent, see compute-image-tools on GitHub

• The certgen package contains a binary that creates a certificate on the instance.

  To review the source code for this agent, see compute-image-windows on GitHub.

• The googet package contains a binary that is a package manager used to install and maintain the guest environment.

  The scripts communicate with Compute Engine services by reading data from the Google Cloud repositories at packages.cloud.google.com.

  To review the source code for this agent, see googet on GitHub.

• The google-compute-engine-vss package installs the Compute Engine VSS agent and provider that are used for taking a persistent disk snapshot using the Microsoft's Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).

  The scripts communicate with Compute Engine services as follows:

  • Communicates with the Google Cloud snapshot service

  To review the source code for this agent, see compute-image-windows on GitHub

• The google-osconfig-agent package contains OS Config agent which is used by VM Manager for managing OS inventory, patches, and OS policies.

  The scripts communicate with Compute Engine services as follows:

  • Reads data from and writes data to the VM metadata
  • By default the OS Config agent does not collect or send any information until the OS Config agent is enabled. After you enable the agent, the agent communicates with the OS Config API service. To review the operations completed by the agent, see VM Manager audit logging.

  To review the source code for this agent, see osconfig on GitHub.

The following Compute Engine drivers are maintained for Windows images:

Each driver is packaged using GooGet and published to Google Cloud repositories. Source code for the drivers is at compute-windows-drivers on GitHub. All Google Cloud Windows images are preconfigured with the GooGet tool and Google Cloud repositories. If you need to install GooGet and set up repositories yourself, see Packaging and package distribution.

To install or upgrade a specific driver, run following command:

googet install DRIVER_PACKAGE_NAME

For step-by-step instructions about installing the guest environment, see Installing the guest environment.

Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Last updated 2025-08-07 UTC.

[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Hard to understand","hardToUnderstand","thumb-down"],["Incorrect information or sample code","incorrectInformationOrSampleCode","thumb-down"],["Missing the information/samples I need","missingTheInformationSamplesINeed","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-07 UTC."],[[["Guest environments, which are sets of scripts, daemons, and binaries, are automatically installed on VM instances started with Google-provided public images to ensure proper functionality on Compute Engine."],["Manual installation of the guest environment is necessary when importing custom images or virtual disks without opting for automatic installation, migrating VMs using Migrate to Virtual Machines, or using images that lack guest environment optimizations or are older than version `v20141218`."],["The Linux guest environment includes components like `google-compute-engine`, `google-guest-agent`, `google-compute-engine-oslogin`, `gce-disk-expand`, and `google-osconfig-agent` packages, each handling specific tasks such as system configurations, account management, OS Login, disk expansion, and OS management, respectively."],["The Windows guest environment consists of packages such as `google-compute-engine-windows`, `google-compute-engine-sysprep`, and others, responsible for managing accounts, network configurations, preparing images, running scripts, and performing diagnostics, among other functions."],["Compute Engine offers a suite of Windows drivers for various hardware components, including Ethernet, SCSI disks, display adapters, crash handling, memory ballooning, and virtual NICs, which can be installed or upgraded using the `googet` package manager."]]],[]]

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