Within our organization group we have a fairly high turnover for Google Compute Engine Virtual Machines and lots of people using them. Therefore, we are looking into creating an internal shareable VM image, mainly with Python/R set up already alongside some useful environments and some other command line tools.
Ideally, the easy VM setup would be accompanied by easy access to our group Google Cloud Storage buckets. However, there are inconsistencies in how different parts of the group access VMs. Some do it via google cloud SDK at the terminal (so authentication is done for the user). Other parts via the browser SSH button, which logs in as a different user seemingly without any permissions granted. There is also a reluctance to install the SDK on local machines.
Is there a good way to create a shareable VM image (+workflow) that allows access to buckets easily? E.g. can we grant permission to a VM image instead of a user?