How to make/setup a Google Cloud Server

1. Create a Gmail account.
2. Navigate to https://cloud.google.com/.
3. Click the console button in the top right-hand corner of the screen.
4. There should be a banner at the top of the screen that says: “Your free trial is waiting: activate now to get $300 credit to explore Google Cloud products.” Press Activate.
5. Complete the first two steps of the activation process. Note: Virtual cards do not work 99% of the time (even if it “works” you’ll get tons of errors).
6. Once activated, navigate to Compute Engine and then VM Instances.
7. Click “Create”.
8. Now select the region you want your server in. The best regions are Northern Virginia and Iowa. For Northern Virginia, you would want to use Virginia proxies and Chicago proxies for Iowa. For the zone, use us-central1-a for Iowa and us-east4-a for Northern Virginia. 
9. Now select CPU and RAM. Recommended settings for a free account would be 8 vCPUS and 32 GB RAM. Next, for the CPU platform, recommended settings would be “Intel Broadwell or later”.
10. Next, you want to select the boot disk. Select “Windows Server R2 Datacenter”. Note: You can use either 2012 or 2016, but 2016 has antivirus installed. For Boot Disk Type select “SSD Persistent Disk”.
11. Under Firewall, make sure to check “Allow HTTP traffic” and “Allow HTTPS traffic”. This should be what your settings look like:
12. If you are ready to move on, press “Create”.

How to Setup a Google Cloud Server

1. After creating your server, wait for the server boot up. This typically takes about 5 minutes.
2. Next, click the arrow next to “RDP” and select “Set Windows Password” Note: Save the password somewhere as you don’t want to lose it.
3. Next, click the arrow again and select “Download the RDP file”.
4. You will need a client in order to run the file. Windows already has a client built-in. For Mac users, I would install the Microsoft Remote Desktop app here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-remote-desktop-10/id1295203466?mt=12. 
5. Run the RDP file with the client you have. Allow all connections and enter the password that you set.
6. Next, on the server manager navigate to “Configure this local server” and turn IE Enhanced Security Configuration off.
7. Navigate to “Add roles and features” and click next until you get to “Features”.
8. Select .NET Framework 3.5 Features and install.
9. The final step is to adjust the time zone. Use the search feature and look up “Date and Time”. Then set the time zone to the one you are currently in. Note: If you do not set the time zone correctly, your bot’s scheduling features will not work properly.
10. You should now be finished and install any bots that you would want on that server. Note: If you want to delete your server, make sure to deactivate any bots on the server.