Essential Tools for Cloud Platform
The Cloud SDK is a set of tools for Cloud Platform. It contains gcloud, gsutil, and bq, which you can use to access Google Compute Engine, Google Cloud Storage, Google BigQuery, and other products and services from the command-line. You can run these tools interactively or in your automated scripts.
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20170711080714im_/https://cloud.google.com/images/products/sdk/essential-tools.png)
Manage Virtual Machine Instances
gcloud makes it easy to manage your fleet of virtual machines on Compute Engine ‐ everything from creating, starting and managing VM instances to rolling your own VM images. You can also use gcloud to make SSH connections to your instances.
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20170711080714im_/https://cloud.google.com/images/products/sdk/manage-virtual-machine.png)
Networks, Firewalls, Disk Storage and More
You can use gcloud to manage Compute Engine networks, firewalls, disk storage, and more without having to use the Cloud Platform console. With gcloud, managing configurations for your Compute Engine environment is just a few keystrokes away.
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20170711080714im_/https://cloud.google.com/images/products/sdk/networks-firewalls-disk-storage.png)
Use your Favorite Languages
Client libraries for Java, Python, NodeJS, Ruby, Go, .NET, and PHP are available for installation from the appropriate package managers.
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20170711080714im_/https://cloud.google.com/images/products/sdk/languages.png)
Run Local Service Emulators
Cloud SDK emulators for Google Cloud Pub/Sub and Google Cloud Datastore allow you to simulate these services in your environment for local development, testing and validation. You start and manage service emulators using the gcloud tool.
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20170711080714im_/https://cloud.google.com/images/products/sdk/run-local-service-emulators.png)
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20170711080714im_/https://cloud.google.com/images/products/logos/cloud-symbol.png)
Coverage Across Cloud Platform
Cloud SDK includes integrated command line tools for many Cloud Platform products.
- Compute Engine
- Container Engine
- Deployment Manager
- Cloud DNS
- Cloud IAM
- Cloud Storage
- App Engine
- Cloud ML Engine
- Cloud SQL
- Cloud Dataproc
- Cloud Logging
- BigQuery
- Cloud Dataflow
- Resource Manager
- Source Repositories
Cloud SDK Features
Command-line interface for Cloud Platform products and services
- gcloud Tool
- gcloud manages authentication, local configuration, developer workflow, and interactions with the Cloud Platform APIs.
- gsutil Tool
- gsutil provides command line access to manage Cloud Storage buckets and objects.
- Powershell cmdlets (Windows)
- Google Cloud Tools for PowerShell is a collection of Windows PowerShell cmdlets for managing Google Cloud Platform resources within the Windows PowerShell environment.
- bq Tool
- bq allows you to run queries, manipulate datasets, tables, and entities in BigQuery through the command line.
- kubectl Tool
- kubectl orchestrates the deployment and management of Kubernetes container clusters on gcloud.
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20170711080714im_/https://cloud.google.com/images/products/logos/cloud-symbol.png)
Client Libraries and Optional Components
After you’ve installed Cloud SDK, you can also install language specific cloud libraries and optional Cloud SDK components.
Google Cloud Client Libraries
Install language-specific client libraries for Cloud Platform products.
Google Cloud Client LibrariesGoogle API Client Libraries
Install language-specific client libraries for additional Google APIs.
Google API Client LibrariesCloud SDK Pricing
Cloud SDK is free of charge for Google Cloud Platform customers.
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20170711080714im_/https://cloud.google.com/images/products/logos/cloud-symbol.png)