Question: My local machine is running Ubuntu 16.04 and I have created a VM instance on Google Cloud Platform, which is also Ubuntu 16.04. How do I connect to this virtual machine from my own laptop terminal? I wish to install anaconda etc on my virtual machine so how do I 'access the VM's terminal from my local machine's terminal?'

Answer: 
for connecting to GCP instance from local machine you've to setup **gcloud command-line tool** and select the default region and zone in local machine. This might help
<https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/connecting-to-instance>
1. Make sure you generate a SSH key-pair(public+private) with PuttyGen.
2. Paste the contents of your public key in GCE in the SSH Key section. 
[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0PdA2.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0PdA2.png)
3. Open Putty and enter the session details (username@instanceip) and don't forget to add in the Auth section the path to your private key.
[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nHJxX.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nHJxX.png)

If you wish a more basic approach, then you need to employ the ssh command in a similar manner as below but not before registering your private key.

```
ssh remote_username@remote_host

```