Change your GCP free tier VM to avoid usage charges
If you are using Google Cloud Platform (GCP) free tier virtual machine instances, be aware that some changes have taken place from 1st of August 2021.GCP used to provide one f1-micro ( 1vCPU, 0.6 GB RAM) instance as free tier VM.Now Google is upgrading the free tier VM instance to e2-micro ( 2 vCPU, 1 GB RAM) instance.
You need to upgrade your f1-micro vm instance to e2-micro VM instance to continue receiving free tier discount. You need to upgrade your VM by 1st September 2021. After that, you will be charged for the f1-micro instance usage.
If you have already created VM instance with f1-micro configuration, you should have received the following mail from Google.
Either you need to remove your f1-micro instance and create new e2-micro instances or upgrade the f1-micro vm instance to e2-micro instance.
Step by step guide to upgrade f1-micro VM to e2-micro
Step 1) Log into your Google Cloud Platform ( GCP ) account.
Step 2) Click on the Hamburger menu icon on top left corner to view services menu
Step 3) Now place your cursor on the Compute Engine service menu and click on the vm instances sub menu option.
Step 4) The resulting page shows all the instances of vm we have created.
Step 5) If the VM instance is running, first we need to stop it. Click on the dot menu and choose the Stop option and wait for the instance to stop.
Step 6) Now click on the VM instance name to view the configuration screen.On the screen you can see that vm is a f1-micro instance.
Step 7) Now click on the Edit button to change the configuration
Step 8) Now we can choose Series and Machine type under Machine configuration.
Step 9) Now Click on the Series dropdown and select E2 option
Step 9) Now Click on the Machine Type dropdown and select e2-micro option
Step 10) Now scroll down to page and click on the save button to save the configuration.
Step 11) Confirm the saved configuration
Step 11) Now go back to VM instances page and use the dot menu to start the instance
