Can I download an snapshot in Google Compute Engine?

Question

Sorry if it's duplicated, I didn't find anything similar. I have my VM running and already created an snapshot and now I want to have my snapshot someplace else. Say, download it to my computer, store it in another cloud product or reuse it in another account. How can I do that? Thanks

Answer 1

For those who are new to google, you can't download snapshots directly. There is no such command. You have to first go to images, and then choose create image based on the snapshot you would like to download. Then go to your main page and create a bucket and copy your bucket url, then export your image with the following command:

gcloud alpha compute images export --destination-uri gs://yourbucket/yourimagename.vmdk  --image     yourImageName   --export-format vmdk  --project yourProjectID

Finally go to your bucket and download the image and attach it to vmware and Go. * Note: you need to wait some time may be 30 minutes before you can download the exported image from your bucket and if you get and error try to change bucket settings and make it public.

Answer 2

For my purposes it was actually better to just create an image, store it in another secondary drive and then from the VM send it to Google Storage.

This link helped me: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/creating-custom-image