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This document describes global, regional, and zonal Compute Engine resources.
Google Cloud resources are hosted in multiple locations worldwide. These locations are composed of regions and zones. Putting resources in different zones in a region provides isolation from many types of infrastructure, hardware, and software failures. Putting resources in different regions provides an even higher degree of failure independence. You can design robust systems by spreading resources across different failure domains.
All Compute Engine resources are either global, regional, or zonal. For example, images are a global resource, but disks are either regional or zonal resources. The scope of the resource determines how accessible the resource is to other resources. For example, global resources are accessible by resources in any region or zone, so virtual machine (VM) instances from different zones can use the same global image. Regional resources are accessible only to resources within the same region. For example, a regional static external IP address is accessible only by resources within the same region. For a VM instance to use a specific static external IP, the instance must be in a zone that is in the same region as the address.
The scope of the resources indicate how accessible they are for other resources. However, all resources, whether global, zonal, or regional, must be unique within the project. That means every resource in Compute Engine must be uniquely named across the project. For example, you cannot name a VM instance example-instance in the zone us-central1-a and then give another VM in the same project the same name.
Global resources are accessible by any resource in any zone within the same project. When you create a global resource, you don't need to provide a scope specification. Global resources include:
An operation is a per-zone resource, a per-region resource, or a global resource. If you are performing an operation on a global resource, the operation is considered a global operation. For example, inserting an image is considered a global operation because images are a global resource.
Note: Operations are unique in that they span all three scopes: global resources, regional resources, and zonal resources. A request to list operations returns operations across all three scopes.Regional resources are accessible by any resources within the same region. For example, if you reserve a static external IP address in a specific region, that static external IP address can only be assigned to instances within that region. Each region also has one or more zones. For a list of available regions and zones, see Regions and zones.
Regional resources include:
interconnectAttachments) determine which Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) networks can reach your on-premises network through a Dedicated Interconnect connection. An attachment is a regional resource, but a Cloud Interconnect connection is a global resource.
Regional disks provide durable storage and synchronous replication of data between two zones within the same region. In a failover situation, you can force-attach a regional disk replica to another instance within the same region. You can't force attach a zonal disk to an instance.
Optionally, you can share images across projects, which lets other projects make images and snapshots from these disks but doesn't let instances in other projects attach the disks.
An operation is a per-zone resource, a per-region resource, or a global resource. If you are performing an operation on a regional resource, the operation is considered a per-region operation. For example, reserving an address is considered regional operation because addresses are a region-specific resource.
Note: Operations are unique in that they span all three scopes: global resources, regional resources, and zonal resources. A request to list operations returns operations across all three scopes.Subnets regionally segment the network IP space into prefixes (subnets) and control which prefix an instance's internal IP address is allocated from.
Resources that are hosted in a zone are called per-zone resources. Zone-specific resources, or per-zone resources, are unique to that zone and are only usable by other resources in the same zone. For example, an instance is a per-zone resource. When you create an instance, you must provide the zone where the instance is located. The instance can access other resources within the same zone, and can access global resources, but it can't access other per-zone resources in a different zone, such as a disk resource.
For a list of available zones, see Regions and zones.
Note: One exception is that instances in one zone can communicate with instances in another zone if both instances belong to the same VPC network.Per-zone resources include:
Google Cloud Hyperdisk and Persistent Disk can be attached to instances that are in the same zone as the disk. You can't attach a disk to an instance in another zone. Optionally, you can share disk resources across projects, which lets other projects make images and snapshots from these disks but doesn't let instances in other projects attach the disks.
You can also share disks between VMs which lets you attach the same disk to multiple VMs in the same zone.
Machine types are per-zone resources. Instances and disks can only use machine types that are in the same zone.
A zonal managed instance group uses an instance template to create a group of identical instances within a single zone. You manage VM instances in a managed instance group as a single entity, rather than managing individual instances.
GPUs are zonal resources. For information about the zones in which GPUs are available, see GPU regions and zones availability.
TPUs are zonal resources. For information about the zones in which TPUs are available, see Availability.
An operation is a per-zone resource, a per-region resource, or a global resource. If you are performing an operation on a zone-specific resource, the operation is considered a per-zone operation. For example, inserting an instance is considered a per-zone operation because the operation is being performed on a zone-specific resource, an instance.
Note: Operations are unique in that they span all three scopes: global resources, regional resources, and zonal resources. A request to list operations returns operations across all three scopes.By default, a request to return a list of resources is scoped to a particular control plane. For example, when you query the API for a list of instances, you must provide the zone for which you want to list instances. To list resources across all zones or regions, you can perform an aggregate list query. Each per-region and per-zone resource has an aggregate list URI that can be queried to list all resources of that type. For example, to list all instances across all zones, you can make a request to the following URI:
https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/<project-id>/aggregated/instances
Similarly, to list all addresses across all regions, make a request to the following URI:
https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/<project-id>/aggregated/addresses
For more information, see the aggregateList method for that resource.
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 2025-07-02 UTC.
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