Manage TPU resources with Compute Engine
This page describes how to connect to, view information about, delete, or reset a TPU VM using Compute Engine.
Manage TPU VMs
You interact with your TPU VMs like any Compute Engine VM. However, you cannot suspend or stop TPU VMs. You also cannot reset multi-host TPU VMs.
Connect to a TPU VM
You connect to TPU VMs the same way you connect to any other Compute Engine instance. For more information, see Connect to Linux VMs.
View information about TPU VMs
You can view information about TPU VMs and MIGs in the same way as any Compute Engine instance or MIG.
- To list all VMs in your project, see Get a list of VMs.
- To list all of your MIGs, see List MIGs.
- To view the details of a TPU VM, see View the details of a VM.
- To view information about a MIG, see View a MIG's properties.
- To view the status of a multi-host TPU slice, see View the status of a TPU slice.
Reset a TPU VM instance
Resetting a TPU VM instance is similar to resetting your computer, for example, by pressing a reset button or holding the power button. A reset operation doesn't perform a graceful reboot, and you might lose unsaved data. We recommend that you reset an instance in the following scenarios:
- You want to re-initialize the instance to its boot state to help ensure optimal performance and stability.
- You want to resume your workload after your guest OS has crashed and is unresponsive, and you have no other options than resetting the instance.
For more information on resetting a TPU VM instance, see Reset operation in the Compute Engine documentation.
Delete a TPU VM instance
To learn how to delete a TPU VM instance, see Delete a Compute Engine instance in the Compute Engine documentation.
Update a TPU VM instance properties
You can update instance properties for running TPU VM instances. For more information, see Update instance properties.
Apply new VM configurations in a MIG
For information about applying new TPU VM configurations in a managed instance group (MIG), see Apply new VM configurations in a MIG.
What's next
- Learn how to Create a MIG with single-host TPU slices.
- Learn how to Create a MIG with a multi-host TPU slice.
- Learn about TPUs in GKE.
- Learn how to run an ML workload on TPUs, for example, Serve Qwen2-72B-Instruct with vLLM on TPUs.