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GCP Move Instance to Another Zone

Moving a GCP instance to another zone is actually much simpler than initially thought. It’s just a single gcloud command.

gcloud compute instances move instance-name \
--zone us-central1-a \
--destination-zone us-central1-b

A few details about moving to another zone.

  • VM has to be running.
  • You may get a new internal or external IP address
  • Local SSDs are ephemeral, so you can’t move them.
  • When moving between regions, you may have to select a subnetwork.
  • You may have to change GPUs available in the destination if you use them.

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"

Migrate GCP VM to another network

Here are the steps how to migrate a GCP VM from one network to another. It involves recreating the instance in that network.

  1. Find the VM. Click the ‘Create Similar’ button.
  2. Select the new network. Save Network. Everything else should stay the same.
  3. Don’t click Create, but get the ‘Create Similar’ command line script only. Click Cancel after.
  4. Make sure to edit the hostname. GCP appends a ‘-1’ at the end of hostname.
  5. Edit VM to keep all disks. Delete VM. Make sure to preserve boot drive.
  6. Run the ‘Create Similar’ command line script you capture to create new VM in the new network.
  7. The new VM will be based on golden image.
  8. Stop VM. Swap new disks with old disks.
  9. Start VM.
  10. Done.