Labels are utility for organizing GCP resources. Labels are key value pairs that you can attach to your resources like VMs, disks, snapshots, and images. You can create and manage labels using the GCP console, gcloud, or the resource manager API, and each resource can have up to 64 labels. For example, you can create a label to define the environment of your virtual machine. Then you define the label for each of your instances as either production or test. Using this label, you can search and list all your production resources for inventory purposes. Labels can also be used in scripts to help analyze cost or run bulk operations on multiple resources. The screenshot on the right shows an example of four labels that are created on an instance. Let's go over some examples of what you use labels for. We recommend adding labels based on the team or cost center to distinguish instances owned by different teams. You can use this type of label for cost accounting or budgeting. For example, team marketing and team research. You can also use labels to distinguish components. For example, component: redis, component: frontend. Again, you can label based on environment or stage. You should also consider using labels to define an owner or a primary contact for a resource. For example, owner: Lisa, contact: OPM, or add labels to your resource to define their state. For example, state: in use, state: ready for deletion. You can even visualize spend over time with Data Studio. Data Studio turns your data into informative dashboards and reports that are easy to read, easy to share, and fully customizable. For example, you can slice and dice your billing reports using your labels.