Bringing your own licenses

Linux Windows

This document describes how Google Cloud supports bringing your own licenses (BYOL) that have dedicated hardware requirements to Compute Engine. Before attempting to bring images with existing licenses to Google Cloud, review your licensing terms and conditions.

Bringing your existing physical-core or physical-processor licenses that have dedicated hardware requirements requires you to bring your own media and to run that media on hardware configurations, such as sole-tenant nodes, that are compliant with your licenses. You can bring images with existing licenses in any region that supports sole-tenant nodes, and although there is no additional charge for bringing images with existing licenses, you must still pay for your licenses according to your agreements.

Licensing scenarios such as licenses related to Linux BYOS with RHEL or SLES, as well as Microsoft applications don't require sole-tenant nodes. If you are considering bringing licenses from Microsoft applications such as SharePoint Server and SQL Server, use Microsoft License Mobility.

Sole-tenant nodes are physical servers dedicated to hosting virtual machine (VM) instances for only your project. You can configure sole-tenant nodes to support various workload requirements, such as requirements for minimizing the number of physical servers and cores. Consult your licensing agreements to determine which configuration options are most suitable for your workloads.

To support bringing your own licenses, and to help you manage compliance requirements related to your licenses, Google Cloud provides tools for importing images, managing VMs on dedicated hardware by using sole-tenant nodes, minimizing physical core usage, and tracking usage of physical cores for reporting purposes.

To bring images with existing licenses to Google Cloud, you must do the following:

Prepare the images according to your license agreements.

Activate your licenses.

Import virtual disk files and create images from those disk files.

Create sole-tenant node templates.

Create sole-tenant node groups.

Provision VMs on the node groups with the imported virtual disk files.

Track the license usage of your VMs. To help you with reporting your license consumption, Google provides tools to help you track both license usage and physical core and processor usage.

Report license consumption to your vendor.

If you need support or have questions regarding licensing, contact your licensing reseller. If you need support or have questions about bringing images with existing licenses to Google Cloud, contact Google Cloud Support.

Before you begin

Importing and creating an image from an offline virtual disk

To provision VMs with your existing licenses, you must bring your own media. Images based on a premium image are not eligible for BYOL because premium images require pay-as-you-go licenses from Google. For information about premium images, see Operating system details.

If you have virtual disks (golden disks or golden images) in your on-premises environment with software configurations or licenses that you need, the import virtual disk tool can help you do the following:

Before you import the virtual disk file for your VM, verify that there are no incompatibilities in the file by downloading and running the precheck tool from inside your VM. Also, because software from third parties might interfere with the installation of Compute Engine drivers, Google recommends removing third-party software before importing your image.

To start a VM with your own license, import a virtual disk with the OS you want to use. You can import virtual disks from Cloud Storage buckets and local workstations. When importing a virtual disk file from a local workstation, the image import tool uploads your image file to Cloud Storage, and, if necessary, creates a new Cloud Storage bucket. Then, the import tool copies the file to Compute Engine and creates a bootable image from the virtual disk file.

Files stored on Cloud Storage and images in Compute Engine incur charges. After verifying that the image imports and boots correctly as a VM, you can delete the virtual disk file from Cloud Storage.

Permissions required for this task

To perform this task, you must have the following permissions:

roles/compute.admin on the Cloud Build service account
roles/iam.serviceAccountUser on the Cloud Build service account

Console

Go to the Images page.

Go to Images
Click Create image.
Specify a name for the image.
Under Source, choose Virtual disk (VMDK, VHD).
Under Cloud Storage file, choose Browse and browse to the Cloud Storage location of the image to import.
Under Operating system on virtual disk, choose the operating system of the image that you are importing.
Make sure that Install guest packages is selected, so that the image you are importing is bootable.
Expand License key options. Under OS License, choose Use your own license key.
Click Create to import the image.

gcloud

Run gcloud compute images import to import a virtual disk file and to create a disk image from the virtual disk file:

gcloud compute images import IMAGE_NAME \
    --source-file VMDK_NAME \
    --byol

Replace the following:

IMAGE_NAME: name to give the image created from the virtual disk file.
VMDK_NAME: name of the virtual disk to import and create an image from. You can import a VMDK file from the following:
- A local file: If importing from a local file, use an absolute path or a relative path to the file. Depending on the size of the virtual disk and the speed of the network connection, the upload might take tens of minutes.
- Cloud Storage: If importing from Cloud Storage, the Cloud Storage bucket must be in the same project that you are using to import the virtual disk, and you must specify the full path to the file as gs://BUCKET_NAME/OBJECT_NAME. Replace BUCKET_NAME with the name of the Cloud Storage bucket and OBJECT_NAME with the name of the Cloud Storage object.

Activating licenses

After verifying that you are importing a compatible OS, you are responsible for checking that your licensing agreements permit you to bring your own licenses and that you are permitted to use the guest OS image and license import environment provided by Google. You are also responsible for preparing your guest OS image for import according to your licensing agreements.

To activate a license, use startup scripts with your Multiple Activation Key (MAK), or configure access to your organization's Microsoft Key Management Service. You can't activate images with existing licenses against the Compute Engine license server.

After importing your image and activating the license, provision a VM based on the imported image onto a sole-tenant node.

Creating sole-tenant nodes

To run VMs with your existing licenses on dedicated hardware, you must do the following:

Create sole-tenant node templates by following the instructions in Creating sole-tenant node templates.
Create sole-tenant node groups by following the instructions in Creating sole-tenant node groups. When creating your node group, consider the following for your host maintenance policy:
- If your licenses are assigned per physical core, use the restart-in-place or migrate-within-node-group host maintenance policy to minimize the number of physical servers used.
- If your licenses are assigned per user or device (such as for Virtual Desktop licenses), use the default host maintenance policy, as these models don't require limiting physical server usage.
For more information, see Host maintenance policies.

Provisioning a sole-tenant VM

Provision a VM on the node group and specify its host maintenance policy. Be aware of the following requirements:

To provision in node groups with restart-in-place host maintenance policy, make sure that the VM has the value TERMINATE for the on host maintenance option.
To provision in node groups with migrate-within-node-group maintenance policy, make sure that the VM targets a single node group with the node-group-name affinity label, and that it does not target single nodes with the node-name affinity label. Any type of host maintenance option is valid, but the recommendation is to use MIGRATE.

Permissions required for this task

To perform this task, you must have the following permissions:

compute.instances.create on the project, and other permissions related to creating an instance that are related to your scenario

Console

If you used node affinity labels in the template, you can create multiple VMs by using managed instance groups (MIGs) and specifying the node affinity labels under Sole-tenant nodes settings, or, create individual VMs from the node group details page:

Go to the Sole-tenant nodes page.

Go to Sole-tenant nodes
Click the Name of the node group to provision a VM on.
Create a VM on a sole-tenant node by doing one of the following:
- To create a VM anywhere in the sole-tenant node group, click Create instance.
- To create a VM on a specific sole-tenant node, click the Name of a sole-tenant node group, then click the Name of a sole-tenant node, then click Create instance.
Configure the sole-tenant VM. Because you already selected your node group or a specific node, the Region, Zone, and Node affinity labels are already specified by the template.
Select a Machine configuration by specifying the Machine family, Series, and Machine type. Choose the Series that corresponds to the sole-tenant node type.
Select the Boot disk for the sole-tenant VM, which is the previously imported virtual disk image.
Select the Management tab:
- Under Availability policy > On host maintenance, select the restart behavior of the VM.
- Under Automatic Restart, select On (recommended) or Off.
Click Create.

gcloud

Provision a sole-tenant VM on a sole-tenant node group by using the gcloud compute instances create command.

gcloud compute instances create VM_NAME \
    --machine-type MACHINE_TYPE
    --image IMAGE_NAME \
    --zone ZONE \
    --node-group GROUP_NAME \
    RESTART_BEHAVIOR \
    --maintenance-policy MAINTENANCE_POLICY

Replace the following:

VM_NAME: name of the VM to create.
MACHINE_TYPE: machine type for the new VM.
IMAGE_NAME: image to create a VM from. This is the image created during the import process.
ZONE: zone to create the VM in.
GROUP_NAME: name of the node group to provision the VM on.
RESTART_BEHAVIOR: restart behavior of this VM. Set the restart behavior to one of the following values:
- --restart-on-failure
- --no-restart-on-failure
MAINTENANCE_POLICY: VM behavior during maintenance events. Set the maintenance policy to one of the following values:
- MIGRATE
- TERMINATE

REST

Provision a sole-tenant VM on a sole-tenant node group by using the instances.insert method.

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

{
  "name": "VM_NAME",
  "machineType": "/zones/MACHINE_TYPE_ZONE/machineTypes/MACHINE_TYPE",
  "scheduling": {
    "nodeAffinities": [
      {
        "key": "node-group",
        "operator": "IN",
        "values": [
        "GROUP_NAME"
        ]
      }
    ],
    "onHostMaintenance": "MAINTENANCE_POLICY",
    "automaticRestart": "AUTOMATIC_RESTART"
  },
  "networkInterfaces": [
    {
     "network": "/global/networks/NETWORK",
     "subnetwork": "/regions/region/subnetworks/SUBNETWORK"
    }
  ],
  "disks": [
    {
      "boot": true,
      "initializeParams": {
        "sourceImage": "/projects/IMAGE_PROJECT/global/images/family/IMAGE_FAMILY"
       }
    }
  ]
}

Replace the following:

PROJECT_ID: ID of the project to create the VM in.
VM_ZONE: zone to create the VM in.
VM_NAME: name of the new VM.
MACHINE_TYPE_ZONE: zone containing the machine type.
MACHINE_TYPE: machine type to provision the VM on.
GROUP_NAME: name of the node group to provision the VM on.
MAINTENANCE_POLICY: VM behavior during maintenance events, set to either MIGRATE or TERMINATE.
AUTOMATIC_RESTART: specifies whether the VM is automatically restarted if Compute Engine stops the VM. The default value is true.
NETWORK: name of the network to connect the VM to.
SUBNETWORK: name of the subnetwork to connect the VM to.
IMAGE_PROJECT: image project containing the source image.
IMAGE_FAMILY: image family of the source image.

What's next

Consult the FAQ for bringing your own licenses to Google Cloud.
Learn about Windows on Compute Engine.

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 2026-06-09 UTC.

Bringing your own licenses Stay organized with collections Save and categorize content based on your preferences.

Before you begin

Console

gcloud

REST

Importing and creating an image from an offline virtual disk

Permissions required for this task

Console

gcloud

Activating licenses

Creating sole-tenant nodes

Provisioning a sole-tenant VM

Permissions required for this task

Console

gcloud

REST

What's next