Support Custom ISO upload
Please support custom ISO upload so we can use operating systems not offered by Compute Engine. Such as modified/slimmed down Linux distros.
Will also let people customers upload Windows Desktop OS without Google having to figure out complicated licensing with MS.

Thanks for you suggestion. ISO support is something we’re looking at, although importing a disk image for an OS that Google does not publish an image for is already possible, through the process of creating your own image 1. Note that existing ISO images cannot run without first being modified to include the necessary OS drivers to support GCE’s virtual hardware devices (at least disk and networking). It may not be the case that all Linux distributions can support those.
However: we would not implement this for the purpose of allowing customers to violate Microsoft licensing, because we cannot legitimately support scenarios that Microsoft has disallowed. There is currently no available option for anybody to run Microsoft Desktop OSs on any public multi-tenant cloud that we are aware. You have to use dedicated hardware.
1 https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/images/import-existing-image
19 comments
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Avi commented
Boot iso to perform bare metal recovery of on-prem system(s) to GCP.
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Abraham commented
Another crucial function that booting from an ISO file wood bring is the ability to use live image troubleshooting tools, which there are thousands of, to be able to work on an operating system while it's offline, with that there should also be an option for graphical output from a VM while offline and not connected to a network, because the serial Council does not support graphical user interfaces, the goal for gcp should be to achieve all the functionality that you have with your local server rack and greatly surpass it, even if a use case doesn't apply to you there are so many situations which have different use cases the idea is people should never feel Limited when they move from their local hardware to the cloud, they should feel more empowered they shouldn't have to sacrifice any features it should be the opposite
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JB commented
Any update? The instructions for using a raw image file and preparing it for GPC are super complicated. I just want to upload iso image files and run virtual machines in my browser. KISS- keep it simple...
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Anonymous commented
I am desperately requiring .iso import functionality
This is a major feather that GCloud needs!
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Razin Shethwala commented
Need this feature ASAP to use my own Windows image in GCP.
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PRABU G commented
very critical. need to enable this feature soon.
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Steve Potter commented
Could really use this feature. Consider this another +1 vote.
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adsf commented
Still waiting for it to be available.
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Anonymous commented
i need this soooo much as well..
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Wild Hosting commented
Need this very much , in addition to other thousand peoples which they don't have the time to add requests here !!!
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John commented
vultr already has the option of uploading a ISO file, this feature is very important for me it was a real pain in the neck not having this feature and having to install freepbx on Cent OS and I still have issues with it, this could have saved me hours of troubleshooting
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Aris commented
Need it as well!
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Alexander Aric commented
Yes, this would simplify deployment. Please do asap.
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Anonymous commented
This would be awesome, please!
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Anonymous commented
What about using custom images / iso that are virtual network appliances such as LogRhythm, AlienVault, etc.
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Thanks for your continued interest in this feature. As we've mentioned before, one of the reasons we maintain this UV forum is to get this kind of feedback. An important element of it is to help us prioritize the many features we could build for customers with our limited available engineering bandwidth (no matter how big, no software team ever has enough time for everything!). As I write this comment, this feature has a total of 15 votes here on this forum, whereas we are actively working on the items higher up the list that have hundreds of votes. We are always working to complete as many requests as we can, however I can't predict a timeline for this item, because it is rarely requested right now.
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Anonymous commented
if vmware and virtual box can support iso images, why can't compute engine?
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JM commented
Seriously. Come on.
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Rob Diamond commented
Hi. Any progress here? Not seeing a way to easily deploy an pre-made OS ISO, such as an Asterisk PBX image.