Deploying to Compute Engine
Compute Engine can pull containers directly from Artifact Registry
repositories.
Required permissions
The Compute Engine service account needs access to Artifact Registry in
order to pull container images.
Depending on your organization policy configuration, the default service account might
automatically be granted the Editor role on your
project. We strongly recommend that you disable the automatic role grant by
enforcing the iam.automaticIamGrantsForDefaultServiceAccounts organization policy
constraint. If you created your organization after May 3, 2024, this
constraint is enforced by default.
If you disable the automatic role grant, you must decide which roles to grant to the default
service accounts, and then grant these
roles yourself.
If the default service account already has the Editor role, we recommend that you replace the
Editor role with less permissive roles.
Some examples of required access scopes and required roles for different
scenarios are as follows:
- To pull container images from Artifact Registry repositories, you must
grant the Compute Engine service account the Artifact Registry
Reader role (
roles/artifactregistry.reader). Additionally, ensure the
read-only access scope is set
for Cloud Storage storage buckets.
- You want the VM instance to upload to repositories. In this case, you must
configure an access scope
with write access to storage:
read-write, cloud-platform, or
full-control.
- The VM instance is in a different project than the repositories that you want
to access. In the project with the repositories, grant
the required permissions to the instance's service account.
- The repositories are in the same project, but you don't want
the default service account to have the same level of access across all
repositories. In this case, you must grant the appropriate permissions at the
repository level and revoke the Artifact Registry permissions at the
project level.
- The VM is associated with a custom service account. Ensure that the service
account has the required permissions and access scope.
- You are using custom roles to grant permissions and the custom role does not
include the required Artifact Registry permissions. Add the required
permissions to the role.
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Last updated 2025-08-25 UTC.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-25 UTC."],[[["\u003cp\u003eCompute Engine can directly pull containers from Artifact Registry repositories.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe Compute Engine service account requires Artifact Registry access to pull container images.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eDisabling the automatic Editor role grant for the default service account is recommended and may require you to manually grant specific roles.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eTo pull images, the service account needs the Artifact Registry Reader role, and \u003ccode\u003eread-only\u003c/code\u003e access scope should be set for Cloud Storage.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eWhen working with multiple projects, or custom service accounts, ensure the appropriate permissions and access scopes are configured for the specific account.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],[],null,["# Deploying to Compute Engine\n\nCompute Engine can pull containers directly from Artifact Registry\nrepositories.\n\nRequired permissions\n--------------------\n\nThe Compute Engine service account needs access to Artifact Registry in\norder to pull container images.\n\n\nDepending on your organization policy configuration, the default service account might\nautomatically be granted the [Editor role](/iam/docs/roles-overview#basic) on your\nproject. We strongly recommend that you disable the automatic role grant by [enforcing the `iam.automaticIamGrantsForDefaultServiceAccounts` organization policy\nconstraint](/resource-manager/docs/organization-policy/restricting-service-accounts#disable_service_account_default_grants). If you created your organization after May 3, 2024, this\nconstraint is enforced by default.\n\n\nIf you disable the automatic role grant, you must decide which roles to grant to the default\nservice accounts, and then [grant these\nroles](/iam/docs/granting-changing-revoking-access) yourself.\n\n\nIf the default service account already has the Editor role, we recommend that you replace the\nEditor role with less permissive roles.To safely modify the service account's roles, use [Policy Simulator](/policy-intelligence/docs/simulate-iam-policies) to see the impact of\nthe change, and then [grant and revoke the\nappropriate roles](/iam/docs/granting-changing-revoking-access).\n\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\nSome examples of required access scopes and required roles for different\nscenarios are as follows:\n\n- To pull container images from Artifact Registry repositories, you must grant the Compute Engine service account the Artifact Registry Reader role (`roles/artifactregistry.reader`). Additionally, ensure the `read-only` [access scope](/storage/docs/oauth-scopes) is set for Cloud Storage storage buckets.\n- You want the VM instance to upload to repositories. In this case, you must configure an [access scope](/storage/docs/oauth-scopes) with write access to storage: `read-write`, `cloud-platform`, or `full-control`.\n- The VM instance is in a different project than the repositories that you want to access. In the project with the repositories, [grant](/artifact-registry/docs/access-control#grant) the required permissions to the instance's service account.\n- The repositories are in the same project, but you don't want the default service account to have the same level of access across all repositories. In this case, you must grant the appropriate permissions at the repository level and revoke the Artifact Registry permissions at the project level.\n- The VM is associated with a custom service account. Ensure that the service account has the required permissions and access scope.\n- You are using custom roles to grant permissions and the custom role does not include the required Artifact Registry permissions. Add the required [permissions](/artifact-registry/docs/access-control#permissions) to the role."]]
