Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Google Cloud

Red Hat and Google Cloud have a well-established track record of introducing joint solutions to meet the needs of users.  Our partnership has allowed us to jointly deliver a hybrid cloud environment that provides a stable, secure, and flexible foundation for deploying and managing workloads. Recognized as 2025 Google Cloud Technology Partner of the Year, we're taking the next step in this journey by introducing Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Google Cloud.  

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Google Cloud represents the continuing collaboration between Red Hat and Google to deliver Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that's optimized for Google Cloud.  RHEL for Google Cloud continues to build on features and benefits available with RHEL today, including:

• A pre-tuned, ready-to-run image that is tightly integrated with Google Cloud's infrastructure fabric. Users automatically get "ready to run" performance improvements for the most common workloads.
• Enhanced observability and reporting.  RHEL for Google Cloud instances are integrated with Google Cloud Observability using the OpenTelemetry standard.  This gives administrators rich capabilities to collect, analyze and visualize performance and diagnostics data.
• Increased security from boot to runtime.  Select RHEL for Google Cloud instances support secure boot functionality that allows for stronger protection during the boot process to ensure that only trusted and signed software is loaded. This capability applies to "Shielded VM" types.
• Integrated cloud management tooling.  RHEL for Google Cloud images are discoverable and can be managed with Google Cloud command-line interface (gcloud CLI).  This offers a very natural way to manage RHEL similar to other assets on Google Cloud.
• Minimize infrastructure drift.  RHEL for Google Cloud can be deployed in image mode.  This type of deployment greatly simplifies the building, deployment and management of RHEL by taking advantage of container management tools.  These advantages include the ability to automate updates at scale and to rollback changes with minimal disruption to production environments.
• Flexible procurement.  RHEL for Google Cloud offers flexible purchasing options that include pay-as-you-go (PAYG) and traditional subscription (BYOS).  Red Hat also offers options that allow you to move physical RHEL subscriptions running on premise to run on Google Cloud.
• New features and improvements to existing features with every major and minor update to RHEL.  RHEL for Google Cloud provides access to new images for RHEL 10 and RHEL 9.6.

This is a very familiar experience for our current users. You can deploy RHEL images as instances on Google Compute Engine. And we're just getting started! Our teams are busy working on exciting new features to allow users to easily migrate workloads from on-premise deployments to Google Cloud.  We're looking at new features to allow users to customize images using standard tooling.

Stay tuned for more details on this in the coming months. This is a major step forward in co-engineering solutions to best serve our joint customers. Check out the Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Google Cloud FAQ for answers to common questions, and then give it a try.