Colab tells me to create a bucket, but where?

When using TPUs on Google Colab (such as in the MNIST example), we are told to create a GCS bucket. However, it doesn't tell us where. Without knowing the region/zone of the Colab instance, I am afraid to create a bucket in fear of running into billing issues.

There are actually several questions:

1. Is accessing a GCS bucket from Colab free, or do the normal network egress fees apply?
2. Can I get the region/zone of the colab instance? Most likely not.
3. If the question to both questions above is "no": is there any solution for minimizing costs when using TPUs with Colab?

Thank you for your question.

No, you can not get the region/zone of the colab instance. So you can try creating a multi-regional GCS bucket which should be accessible by the colab. As per the comment, https://github.com/googlecolab/colabtools/issues/597#issuecomment-502746530, Colab TPU instances are only in US zone. So while creating a GCS bucket, you can choose a Multi-region bucket in US.

Checkout https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing to get more details about the pricing information for the GCS buckets.

You can also sign up for a Google Cloud Platform account with 5GB of free storage and $300 in credits at https://cloud.google.com/free/, so that should be able to provide you with enough credits to get started.