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Overview

The landing section for any machine. It answers “what is this thing and what is attached to it” without you clicking anywhere else.
Navigation: Compute → Virtual Machines → click a machine → Overview.

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Resource summary cards

Four cards across the top. Each is also a shortcut — click one to jump to the matching section.
These cards distinguish “none” from “we don’t know”, and the difference matters when you’re debugging.Never conclude a machine has no public IP from an “unavailable” message. Refresh, or check Public IPs directly.

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Metric cards

Three inline charts — CPU Load, Memory Usage and Disk Read — each tagged with its window (Last hour, Last 6 hours, Last 24 hours, Last 7 days).
These three are a glance, not an investigation. For series you can compare — network in and out, disk read and write — use Monitoring.

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Configuration

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Network

The Public IP field is one of three places you can assign an address — the others are the header actions and the Networking section. It’s the most convenient when you’ve just noticed the machine isn’t reachable.

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Location

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Metadata

Missing values show — throughout.
Template ID is the field to reach for when one machine misbehaves and its siblings don’t. Compare it against a known-good machine: same ID means the image is fine and the problem is this machine; different ID means you’re comparing apples to oranges.Instance ID is what support will ask for. Copy it before raising a ticket.

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Tags

A Tags card with a + Add button. Empty it reads “No tags assigned. Add tags to organize and filter resources.” These are the same tags the machine list groups by.
A tag is a single value, not a key–value pair, and there is no edit — fixing a typo means deleting and re-adding. Validation only rejects empty values and exact duplicates on the same machine, so Prod, prod and prod are three different tags that will group separately.Agree a convention before tagging a fleet. See Lists and filters.

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Common task: work out why a machine is unreachable

1

Check the Public IP addresses card

No Static NAT mapping means nothing is published — that’s your answer. An “unavailable” message means try again rather than concluding anything.
2

Check the Network card

No Public IP value confirms it. Use the attach affordance there, or see Public IPs.
3

Confirm the private address looks right

A Private IP outside the network’s range points at a networking problem rather than a publishing one.
4

Check the machine is actually running

The header status badge. A stopped machine is unreachable regardless of addressing.
5

If it has an address and is running, the firewall is next

Mapping makes a machine addressable; the policy decides what gets through. See Firewall Policies.

Monitoring

Full charts with comparable series.

Networking

NICs, addresses and Static NAT.

Volumes

The disks attached to this machine.

The console

Getting in when SSH will not.