Create a Google Cloud C4A virtual machine for LlamaIndex

Set up the virtual machine

In this section, you’ll create a Google Cloud C4A Arm-based virtual machine (VM). You’ll use the c4a-standard-4 machine type, which provides four vCPUs and 16 GB of memory. This VM will host your browser-based LlamaIndex RAG application.

Configure the C4A virtual machine in the Google Cloud console

To create a virtual machine based on the C4A instance type in the console:

1. Navigate to the Google Cloud console .
2. Go to Compute Engine > VM instances and select Create instance.
3. Under Machine configuration, populate fields such as Instance name, Region, and Zone.
4. Set Series to C4A, then select c4a-standard-4 for Machine type.

Configuring machine type to C4A in Google Cloud Console

5. Under OS and storage, select Change and then choose an Arm64-based operating system image. For this Learning Path, select SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
6. For the license type, choose Pay as you go.
7. Increase Size (GB) from 10 to 100 to allocate sufficient disk space, and then select Select.
8. Select Networking from the column on the left.
9. Under Network tags, enter allow-llamaindex-port to link the VM to the firewall rule from the previous section and allow inbound access to port 8000 for the browser-based LlamaIndex RAG application and port 22 for SSH access.
10. Select Create to launch the virtual machine.

After the instance starts, select SSH next to the VM in the instance list to open a browser-based terminal session.

Connecting to a running C4A VM using SSH

A new browser window opens with a terminal connected to your VM.

Terminal session connected to the VM

What you’ve accomplished and what’s next

You’ve now provisioned a Google Cloud C4A VM and connected to it using SSH.

Next, you’ll install LlamaIndex, Ollama, ChromaDB, and the required dependencies on your VM.