Docker Machine enables a simplified approach to set up Docker hosts on supported platforms, including Linux, Windows, OS X, and various cloud providers, in a standard way. As per Docker Inc. “It automatically creates hosts, installs Docker on them, then configures the docker client to talk to them. A “machine” is the combination of a Docker host and a configured client.”
Docker Inc., in their official documentations speaks about Docker Machine compatibility with the following providers:
1. AWS
2. Digital Ocean
3. Google Compute Engine
4. IBM Softlayer
5. Microsoft Azure && Hyper-V
6. OpenStack
7. VirtualBox
8. Rackspace
9. Ubuntu server over SSH – generic driver
10. VMware Fusion/vCloud Air/vSphere
You can play around with different releases and features of Docker Machine at https://github.com/docker/machine/releases
I had Windows 8.1 machine where I wanted to setup Docker Machine to work with my Google Cloud instances. Rather than logging into Google Cloud console and then trying to install manually, I preferred getting stuffs handled automatically through Docker Machine. Just few commands and I am ready to create Docker Host instances on the fly. Here is how I got Docker Machine working with Google Compute Engines.
Setting up Google Cloud SDK Platform
1. Download Google Cloud SDK from https://dl.google.com/dl/cloudsdk/channels/rapid/GoogleCloudSDKInstaller.exe
2. As pre-requisite, you will need Python 2.7 to install it. Select All Users to get this installed automatically.
As shown above, python 2.7 is required to be installed.
Let the installation take care of python 2.7 installation.
Great !! The Google Cloud SDK is successfully installed.
Next, its time to authenticate your local Windows machine to the remote Google Cloud Compute Engine.
As stated, 
Ensure that the right project ID is entered while providing the following command: gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID.
Setting up New Container Host through Docker Machine:
Finally one can use Docker Machine to setup a new docker container Host through the following command:
You can easily see the Google Cloud Engine instances as shown below:
That’s all. You can easily setup multiple Docker hosts on Google Cloud Engine sitting on your local Windows machine through Docker Machine.
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