Accessing gcp compute instances via gcloud sdk You have a bunch of options to ‘ssh’ into gcp VM instances: open in browser window open in browser window on custom port open in browser window using provided ssh key another ssh client (putty, termius, etc) I personally find the ‘gcloud sdk’ way much more convenient to use since I can just launch it from my terminal without having to open the browser, log into cloud console, locate the vm instance and then ssh’ing into it.

Migration to Cloud As your applications scale it becoomes tedious, expensive and error prone to have it all on your data centers. Modern microservices are built with the philosophy of isolation. Scaling up and down of those services should happen with a snap of a finger (enter containerization technologies like dockers replacing traditional VMs), you scale up to serve bigger traffic and also to make it fault tolerant. But even if you have 20 docker pods, a failure in data center as simple as switch failure can bring your whole infrastructure to its knees.