After about 40 hours of experimentation (see
here for where to send payment) I am getting close, but can't get it all the way stood up. Here's what I've gotten done. Looking at
GCE documentation, I think what might be missing is an MS-DOS MBR?
1. Create Client Side VM on VirtualBox
1a. Create a New VM, Select Linux (Other 64bit).
1b. Set memory to 4096
1c. Create a New Virtual Disk, Select Advanced > qcow format, Set to 10G
2. Settings
2a. Select KVM Accelleration
2b. Deselect floppy
2c. Disable/Deselect Audio
2d. Enable Network Interface(s), Select Paravirtualized (vitrio)
2e. Enable Serial Port
2f. Click Storage, Click CD, Click CD Icon, select your csr.iso
3. Start VM
3a. Let it boot up, all the way up. It restarts itself once.
3b. Shut down machine. Exit VirtualBox.
4. Convert Virtual Disk to GCE Allowed Format
4a. Using VBoxManage, convert the qcow to "disk.raw", e.g., VBoxManage clonehd -format RAW "C:\Users\me\VirtualBox VMs\csr\csr.qcow" "C:\Users\me\VirtualBox VMs\disk.raw"
4b. Using Cygwin (windows users), create sparse tarball of disk.raw, e.g. tar -cSzf csr1000v.tar.gz disk.raw --format=oldgnu
5. Create GCE Image
5a. Upload your csr1000v.tar.gz from Step 4 to a Google Storage Bucket
5b. Create new GCE Image by importing from File (GCE Storage)
6. Create VM
6a. Create a GCE VM with 4.0G memory
6b. Choose custom machine > custom image > Select csr1000v.tar.gz
6c. Enable serial port under metadata with serial-port-enable=1
6d. Enable IP routing
7. Start GCE VM
7a. Once the VM is fired up, click it, scroll to bottom Click Serial Port
7b. Watch the VM fail to boot over and over again with "%IOSXEBOOT-1-BOOTFLASH_FAILED_MISSING: (rp/0): Required Bootflash disk failed or missing, reloading system"