Uly.me

cloud engineer

snapshots

GCP UEFI Compatible

When trying to boot from a disk created from snapshot and you’re getting an “UEFI feature is not available for this project” error, you’ll need to create a boot image with the –guest-os-features option set to “UEFI_COMPATIBLE.”

gcloud compute disks create new-server-disk-2 \
--project=project-name \
--source-snapshot=server-disk-2 \
--zone=us-central1-b \
--guest-os-features="UEFI_COMPATIBLE"

It’s about enabling guest operating system features on custom images. The guest operating system features let you configure networking, security, storage, and operating system options on custom images to be used on boot disks.

AWS EC2 Describe Snapshots

Here’s how to describe snapshots using query with tags.

aws ec2 describe-snapshots \
--owner-ids xxxxxxxxxxx \
--profile default \
--region us-east-2 \
--output text \
--query "Snapshots[*].[SnapshotId,Tags[?Key=='Name'].Value[] | [0]]"

Result.

snap-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx	Server1
snap-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx	Server2

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"

AWS LightSail Delete Snapshots

Here’s my script to delete AWS LightSail snapshots. It can delete daily or weekly backups and scheduled via crontab. If you want longer or shorter retention, adjust the expired value. It’s in seconds. 604800 is 1 week. 2592000 is 1 month.

#!/bin/bash
 
current=$(date +%s)
 
if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
  exit 1
fi
 
if [[ $1 = 'daily' ]]; then
  prefix='daily'
  expired=$(($current-604800))
elif [[ $1 = 'weekly' ]]; then
  prefix='weekly'
  expired=$(($current-2592000))
else
  exit 1
fi
 
snaps='/root/snapshots/snapshots.json'
names='/root/snapshots/names.txt'
parse='/root/snapshots/parse.txt'
logfile='/root/snapshots/snapshots.log'
 
/usr/local/bin/aws lightsail get-instance-snapshots > $snaps
cat $snaps | jq -r '.instanceSnapshots[] | .name' > $names
cat $names | grep $prefix > $parse
 
while read -r line; do
 
  snapshot=$(echo $line | cut -d_ -f3)
  snapshotname=$line
 
  if [ `expr $snapshot + 1 2> /dev/null` ] ; then
 
    if [ $snapshot -le $expired ]; then
      echo 'Deleted: '$snapshotname >> $logfile
      /usr/local/bin/aws lightsail delete-instance-snapshot \
      --instance-snapshot-name $snapshotname
    else
      echo 'Nothing: '$snapshotname >> $logfile
    fi
 
  else
    echo $snapshot is not numeric > /dev/null
  fi
 
done < $parse
 
echo 'Current time: '$current >> $logfile
echo 'Expired time: '$expired >> $logfile
echo '-----------------------------------' >> $logfile

Schedule deletes via crontab.

# run daily at 5am
0 5 * * * /bin/bash /root/snapshots/delete-snapshot.sh daily 2>&1
# run weekly every sunday at 6am
0 6 * * 0 /bin/bash /root/snapshots/delete-snapshot.sh weekly 2>&1

AWS LightSail Create Snapshots

Here’s my script to create snapshots of a LightSail instance. Create daily or weekly snapshots.

#!/bin/bash
if [ $1 != '' ]; then 
  prefix=$1
  timestamp=$(date +%s)
  snapshotname=$prefix'_web-server_'$timestamp
  /usr/local/bin/aws lightsail create-instance-snapshot \
  --instance-snapshot-name $snapshotname \
  --instance-name web-server
else
  echo 'Need one argument. e.g. daily or weekly'
fi

Crontab. Job can be scheduled daily or weekly.

# run daily at 4am
0 4 * * * /bin/bash /root/snapshots/create-snapshot.sh daily 2>&1
# run weekly every sunday at 5am
0 5 * * 0 /bin/bash /root/snapshots/create-snapshot.sh weekly 2>&1

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.