VirtualBox and Google Compute Engine

Yes, the same approach will work on a GCE VM.

You can also use Vagrant with the Google Compute Engine plugin to automate creation of virtual machines and GCE VMs.

1. Create GCE instance
2. SSH to that instance
3. Download and install Virtualbox (wget DEB + sudo dpkg -i virtualbox-5*.deb)
4. Upgrade system, build and install kernel modules
   • sudo apt-get update
   • sudo apt-get upgrade
   • sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
   • sudo apt-get install -y build-essential
   • sudo apt-get install -y linux-headers-$(uname -r)
   • sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
5. Profit!

To check if all is good just run VBoxManage --version. If some other errors are present google and resolve