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GCP Move Instance to Another Project

Here’s how to copy a disk from one project to another.

gcloud compute disks create lamp-server \
--source-snapshot https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/project-id/global/snapshots/lamp-server \
--project next-project-id \
--zone us-central1-a

Once all the disks are copied. You can create a snapshot of the boot.

gcloud compute disks snapshot lamp-server

Create an instance from snapshot.

gcloud compute disks create "hostname-boot" \
--project "project-id" \
--zone "us-central1-a" \
--source-snapshot "snapshot-name" \
--type "pd-standard" \
--size "100"

GCP Lists Disk Per Project

Here’s the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) GCloud command to list all disks in a specific project.

gcloud compute disks list --project yourprojectname

GCP Restore

How to restore from GCP Snapshots. Let’s say you have an instance called webserver with 2 disks.

Restore from snapshots:

gcloud compute disks create webserver-boot-r \
--project=your-project \
--source-snapshot=webserver-boot-190616 \
--zone=us-central1-a
gcloud compute disks create webserver-data-r \
--project=your-project \
--source-snapshot=webserver-data-190616 \
--zone=us-central1-a

Stop instance. Detach and attach disks:

gcloud compute instances detach-disk webserver --disk=webserver-boot --zone us-central1-a
gcloud compute instances attach-disk webserver --disk=webserver-boot-r --zone us-central1-a --boot
gcloud compute instances detach-disk webserver --disk=webserver-data --zone us-central1-a
gcloud compute instances attach-disk webserver --disk=webserver-data-r --zone us-central1-a

Boot instance.

GCP Attach Detach Disks

Google Cloud Platform just recently released a beta feature called detaching and attaching boot disks. Previously, boot disks were permanently attached to their VM instances. Now you have the ability to detach boot disk from your instance and attach it to another instance without deleting the original instance. You can also replace the boot disks for an instance rather than recreating the entire instance. I’ve tested it on my test account, and it works quite nicely.

I have 2 servers called blue-server and red-server. I’m detaching the disks on blue-server and attaching it to the red-server.

gcloud compute instances detach-disk blue-server --disk=blue-server-disk --zone us-central1-c
gcloud compute instances attach-disk cyan-server --disk=blue-server-disk --zone us-central1-c
gcloud compute instances detach-disk cyan-server --disk=blue-server-disk --zone us-central1-c
gcloud compute instances attach-disk blue-server --disk=blue-server-disk --zone us-central1-c

Results:

GCP: Attach and Detach Disks

This new GCP feature is still beta. There might be a few quirks here and there, but overall, it’s a must have feature if you are managing OS.