Google Compute Engine - Clone Instance

Question

I have a GCE instance that I have customised and uploaded various applications to (such as PHP apps running under Apache). I now want to duplicate this instance - i.e. everything on it. I originally thought clone might do this but I had a play around with it and it only seems to clone the instance config and not anything customised on it.

I've been googling it and it looks like what I need to do is create an image and use this image on a new instance or clone? Is that correct? If so, are there any could steps by steps out there to do this? I had a look at the Google page on images and it talks about having to terminate the instance to do this. I'm a bit wary of this. Maybe it's just the language used in the docs, but I don't want to lose my existing instance.

Also, will everything be stored on the image? So, for example, will the following all make it onto the image?

• MySQL - config & databases schemas & data?
• Apache - All installed apps under /var/www/html
• PHP - php.ini, etc...
• All other server configs/modifications?

Answer 1

You can create a snapshot of the source instance, then create a new instance selecting the source snapshot as disk. It will replicate the server very fast. For other attached disks, you have to create a new disk and copy file by net (scp, rsync etc)

Answer 2

In the Web Console, create a snapshot, then click on the snapshot and over CREATE INSTANCE button, you can customize the settings and then click where it says:

Equivalent REST or command line

and copy the command line, this will be your template.

From this, you can create a a BASH script (clone_instance.sh), I did something like this:

#!/bin/bash -e

snapshot="my-snapshot-name"
gcloud_account="[email protected]"

#clone 10 machines
for machine in 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10
do 

    gcloud compute --project "myProject" disks create "instance-${machine}" \
        --size "220" --zone "us-east1-d" --source-snapshot "${snapshot}" \
        --type "pd-standard"

    gcloud compute --project "bizqualify" instances create "webscrape-${machine}" \
        --zone "us-east1-d" --machine-type "n1-highmem-4" --network "default" \
        --maintenance-policy "MIGRATE" \
        --service-account "[email protected]" \
        --scopes "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/devstorage.read_only","https://www.googleapis.com/auth/logging.write","https://www.googleapis.com/auth/monitoring.write","https://www.googleapis.com/auth/servicecontrol","https://www.googleapis.com/auth/service.management.readonly","https://www.googleapis.com/auth/trace.append" \
        --tags "http-server","https-server" \
        --disk "name=webscrape-${machine},device-name=webscrape-${machine},mode=rw,boot=yes,auto-delete=yes"

done

Now, in your terminal, you can execute your script

sh clone_instance.sh