Enable virtual displays on a VM (original) (raw)

Linux Windows

This document describes how to enable or disable virtual displays on a virtual machine (VM) instance.

If an application running on your VM requires a display device, but you don't need the performance of a GPU, then configure your VM to use virtual display devices. By enabling virtual displays on a VM, you can run virtual display devices on the VM, such as remote system management tools, remote desktop software, andscreen capturing.

Before you begin

Console

When you use the Google Cloud console to access Google Cloud services and APIs, you don't need to set up authentication.

gcloud

  1. Install the Google Cloud CLI. After installation,initialize the Google Cloud CLI by running the following command:
    gcloud init
    If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.
  2. Set a default region and zone.

Terraform

To use the Terraform samples on this page in a local development environment, install and initialize the gcloud CLI, and then set up Application Default Credentials with your user credentials.

  1. Install the Google Cloud CLI.
  2. If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.
  3. If you're using a local shell, then create local authentication credentials for your user account:
    gcloud auth application-default login
    You don't need to do this if you're using Cloud Shell.
    If an authentication error is returned, and you are using an external identity provider (IdP), confirm that you have signed in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.
    For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.

REST

To use the REST API samples on this page in a local development environment, you use the credentials you provide to the gcloud CLI.
Install the Google Cloud CLI.
If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.
For more information, seeAuthenticate for using REST in the Google Cloud authentication documentation.

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to enable or disable virtual displays on a VM, ask your administrator to grant you theCompute Instance Admin (v1) (roles/compute.instanceAdmin.v1) IAM role on the project. For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

This predefined role contains the permissions required to enable or disable virtual displays on a VM. To see the exact permissions that are required, expand the Required permissions section:

Required permissions

The following permissions are required to enable or disable virtual displays on a VM:

You might also be able to get these permissions with custom roles or other predefined roles.

Pricing

There are no costs associated with enabling or disabling virtual displays on a VM.

Restrictions

For VMs with virtual displays enabled, the following limitations apply:

To enable virtual displays on a VM, select one of the following methods described in this document:

If your VM is running an x64-based Windows OS image earlier than versionv20190312, then, after you enable virtual displays on the VM,install the virtual display driver as described in this document.

Create a VM with virtual displays enabled

To create a VM with virtual displays enabled, select one of the following options:

Console

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Create an instance page.
    Go to Create an instance
  2. Specify the properties for the VM, including the name, zone, and machine type.
  3. In the Display device section, select the Enable display devicecheckbox.
  4. To create the VM, click Create.

gcloud

To create a VM with virtual displays enabled, use thegcloud compute instances create commandwith the --enable-display-device flag.

gcloud compute instances create VM_NAME \
    --enable-display-device \
    --machine-type=MACHINE_TYPE \
    --zone=ZONE

Replace the following:

Terraform

To create a VM with virtual displays enabled, use theTerraform resourcewith the enable_display argument set to true.

For example, to create a VM in zone us-central1-c with virtual displays enabled, and specify f1-micro as the machine type, use the following resource:

To learn how to apply or remove a Terraform configuration, seeBasic Terraform commands.

REST

To create a VM with virtual displays enabled, make a POST request to theinstances.insert method. In the request body, include the enableDisplay field set to true.

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/instances

{
  "name": "VM_NAME",
  "machineType": "zones/ZONE/machineTypes/MACHINE_TYPE",
  "disks": [
    {
      "boot": true,
      "initializeParams": {
        "sourceImage": "project/IMAGE_PROJECT/global/images/IMAGE"
      }
    }
  ],
  "displayDevice": {
    "enableDisplay": true
  },
  "networkInterfaces": [
    {
      "network": "global/networks/default"
    }
  ]
}

Replace the following:

For more information about creating a VM, seeCreate and start a Compute Engine instance.

Enable virtual displays on an existing VM

Before enabling virtual displays on a VM, make sure tostop the VM.

To enable virtual displays on an existing VM, select one of the following options:

Console

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page.
    Go to the VM instances page
  2. In the Name column, click the name of the VM.
    The details page of the VM opens.
  3. Click Edit.
    The page to edit the VM's properties opens.
  4. In the Display device section, select the Enable display devicecheckbox.
  5. Click Save.

gcloud

To enable virtual displays on an existing VM, use thegcloud compute instances update commandwith the --enable-display-device flag.

gcloud compute instances update VM_NAME \
    --enable-display-device \
    --zone=ZONE

Replace the following:

REST

To enable virtual displays on an existing VM, make a POST request to theinstances.updateDisplayDevice method. In the request body, include the enableDisplay field and set it to true.

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/instances/VM_NAME/updateDisplayDevice

{
  "enableDisplay": true
}

Replace the following:

Disable virtual displays on an existing VM

Before disabling virtual displays on a VM, make sure tostop the VM.

To disable virtual displays on an existing VM, select one of the following options:

Console

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page.
    Go to the VM instances page
  2. In the Name column, click the name of the VM.
    The details page of the VM opens.
  3. Click Edit.
    The page to edit the VM's properties opens.
  4. In the Display device section, clear the Enable display devicecheckbox.
  5. Click Save.

gcloud

To disable virtual displays on an existing VM, use thegcloud compute instances update commandwith the --no-enable-display-device flag.

gcloud compute instances update VM_NAME \
    --no-enable-display-device \
    --zone=ZONE

Replace the following:

REST

To disable virtual displays on an existing VM, make a POST request to theinstances.updateDisplayDevice method. In the request body, include the enableDisplay field and set it tofalse.

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/instances/VM_NAME/updateDisplayDevice

{
  "enableDisplay": false
}

Replace the following:

Install the virtual display driver

If you've enabled virtual displays on a Windows VM that runs a Windows OS image earlier than version v20190312, then, to use a virtual display device on the VM, you must install the virtual display driver provided by Google Cloud. If the VM runs a more recent OS image version, then the driver is already installed and you can skip this section.

To install the virtual display driver on a VM with virtual displays enabled, do the following:

  1. Connect to the Windows VM.
  2. Open a PowerShell terminal as an administrator.
  3. Install the google-compute-engine-driver-gga component:
googet install google-compute-engine-driver-gga
  1. Restart the VM.

After you restart the VM, you canverify that the driver was correctly installed as described in the next section.

Verify the virtual display driver installation

If you had to manually install the virtual display driver on a Windows VM as described in the previous section, then you can verify that the installation was successful by doing the following:

  1. If you haven't already,connect to the Windows VM.
  2. Open Device Manager.
  3. In the Device Manager list, in the Display adapters list, make sure that the Google Graphics Array (GGA) driver is listed.
    If the driver isn't listed, thenreinstall the virtual display driver as described in this document.

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