Credentials
By default user account credentials are acquired by gcloud auth login and stored locally on the system. gcloud auth activate-service-account authorizes access using a service account. As with gcloud init and gcloud auth login, this command saves the service account credentials to the local system on successful completion and sets the specified account as the active account in your Cloud SDK configuration. To configure the proxy using a service account, pass the -credential_file parameter or set the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable. This will override gcloud or GCE (Google Compute Engine) credentials, if they exist.