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Slightly off topic, but I have two questions: 1. Are GPUs covered by the free trial (ie, can that $300 be spent towards GPU instances)? 2. How is support for

Slightly off topic, but I have two questions: 1. Are GPUs covered by the free trial (ie, can that $300 be spent towards GPU instances)? 2. How is support for GCP? I've been curious about trying GCP, but held off over GPU support (since AWS was covering my needs and I do ML stuff mostly) and general support (since Google doesn't have a great reputation for supporting products). Also, perhaps an affiliated person can chime in with something about the roadmap to stable GPU support. (It currently says there may be breaking changes.)

boulos 10y ago
1. At this time, we don't grant quota for GPUs for free trial customers (hello various coin miners!). However, if you upgrade from your free trial, you do keep your $300, and that's just money :). 2. Unlike consumer-facing products, GCP is focused on business. We offer paid support plans [1] with high (measured) customer satisfaction. I know several of the people in the support teams (and you see them here on HN as well), and we're really trying to defeat the meme of "Google doesn't do support". As far as "stable GPU support", this is just confusing language surrounding our usual "Beta" terms [2]. Once it becomes Generally Available, no changes would be made. But moreover (for GCE anyway), we don't make API breaking changes from Beta to GA (Beta to GA is "just" about stability in production). [1] https://cloud.google.com/support/ https://cloud.google.com/support/ [2] https://cloud.google.com/terms/launch-stages https://cloud.google.com/terms/launch-stages
- chipperyman573 10y ago
  >1. At this time, we don't grant quota for GPUs for free trial customers (hello various coin miners!). However, if you upgrade from your free trial, you do keep your $300, and that's just money :). What do I have to upgrade to? Isn't GCE all per-minute? Do I just have to pay $0.05 for a standard instance and then use the $300 from my trial? Also, is coin mining against any TOS? I'm not planning on doing it, I'm just curious.
  - boulos 10y ago
    Sorry, upgrading to a paid account (abuse risk is just too high for the free trial, so we keep the quota limits low). Coin mining is not against the TOS. However, because it's usually economically irrational, it's usually abuse. If you don't pay for your GPUs (fake credit card) it's awfully economically rational though ;).
    - Buge 10y ago
      It wasn't always economically irrational. http://web.archive.org/web/20160704054747/http://www.completefusion.com/profitable-litecoin-mining-on-ec2 http://web.archive.org/web/20160704054747/http://www.complet...

boulos 10y ago

1. At this time, we don't grant quota for GPUs for free trial customers (hello various coin miners!). However, if you upgrade from your free trial, you do keep your $300, and that's just money :). 2. Unlike consumer-facing products, GCP is focused on business. We offer paid support plans [1] with high (measured) customer satisfaction. I know several of the people in the support teams (and you see them here on HN as well), and we're really trying to defeat the meme of "Google doesn't do support". As far as "stable GPU support", this is just confusing language surrounding our usual "Beta" terms [2]. Once it becomes Generally Available, no changes would be made. But moreover (for GCE anyway), we don't make API breaking changes from Beta to GA (Beta to GA is "just" about stability in production). [1] https://cloud.google.com/support/ https://cloud.google.com/support/ [2] https://cloud.google.com/terms/launch-stages https://cloud.google.com/terms/launch-stages

chipperyman573 10y ago
>1. At this time, we don't grant quota for GPUs for free trial customers (hello various coin miners!). However, if you upgrade from your free trial, you do keep your $300, and that's just money :). What do I have to upgrade to? Isn't GCE all per-minute? Do I just have to pay $0.05 for a standard instance and then use the $300 from my trial? Also, is coin mining against any TOS? I'm not planning on doing it, I'm just curious.
- boulos 10y ago
  Sorry, upgrading to a paid account (abuse risk is just too high for the free trial, so we keep the quota limits low). Coin mining is not against the TOS. However, because it's usually economically irrational, it's usually abuse. If you don't pay for your GPUs (fake credit card) it's awfully economically rational though ;).
  - Buge 10y ago
    It wasn't always economically irrational. http://web.archive.org/web/20160704054747/http://www.completefusion.com/profitable-litecoin-mining-on-ec2 http://web.archive.org/web/20160704054747/http://www.complet...