Cannot connect to Compute Engine instance via SSH

A non-discussed answer is that you should have at least the standard memory on your VM instance (3.75GB) - do NOT use Micro VM instances.

I could only log in with SSH via browser console or gcloud command line, but not with Putty or Mac terminal SSH. I spent an hour on the phone with support and we found this to be the problem.

I have the same problem but found a workaround to connect via PuTTY manually.

In brief

1. Generate SSH key for the machine instance
2. Add SSH public key to the instance
3. Prepare to log in - acquiring information for IP, login name, pass phrase, private SSH key
4. Connect to the instance via SSH client, e.g. PuTTY in Windows

Detail steps

For me the gcloud quick start had already:

• launched my instance
• created my public and private RSA keys (in C:\Users\USER_NAME\.ssh\)

Public Key - C:\Users\USER_NAME\.ssh\google_compute_engine.pub

Private Key - C:\Users\USER_NAME\.ssh\google_compute_engine.ppk

1. Go to the Google Developers Console in your browser
2. Select your project and in the left hand nav bar click: Compute -> Compute Engine -> VM instances
3. Your running instance(s) will be linked below the CPU usage chart
4. Click the one you want and find the Add SSH key link and click it
5. Paste the entire contents of google_compute_engine.pub into the field that appears
6. Click Save and after a few seconds the key details will appear on the page (if you get an error you pasted from the wrong key file or didn't copy all the text)
7. The first word in those details is your (case sensitive) username

8. Find the External IP above on the page

9. Open PuTTY and paste the external IP into Host Name (port is the default of 22)

10. In the left hand nav expand: Connection -> SSH and then click Auth

11. Next to "Private key file for authentication" click "Browse"
12. Select "C:\Users\USER_NAME\.ssh\google_compute_engine.ppk" and click Open
13. Scroll the left hand nav back up and click the top item "Session"
14. Under "Saved Sessions" enter a name and click "Save"
15. Accept the warning message and you should be prompted to login with the username from above step
16. Input your passphrase
17. Done

Hope this helps. If someone has a solution for the gcloud issue I'd love to hear it too.