Migrating virtual machines (VMs) across Google Cloud projects can simplify your infrastructure management and resource allocation. In this guide, we'll show you how to create, snapshot, and migrate VMs using Google Cloud's command-line tool gcloud. This will help you move VMs between projects and ensure a smooth transition.

1. Creating a New VM Instance

To start, create a new VM instance in your destination project. Here’s how:

gcloud compute instances create rama_test_vm_move \
    --image-project rama_lab \
    --image machine-images-sf-sa \
    --subnet default

In this command:

• rama_test_vm_move is the name of the new VM instance.

• --image-project specifies the project where the image is located.

• --image indicates the name of the image to use.

• --subnet assigns the instance to a subnet (in this case, the default subnet).

For consistency, if you need to create another instance with similar parameters, you can use:

gcloud compute instances create ramatestvmmove \
    --image-project rama-lab \
    --image machine-images-sf-sa \
    --subnet default

2. Creating and Managing Snapshots

Source Project:

1. Create a Snapshot: To snapshot a disk from a VM in your source project, use:

    gcloud compute snapshots create sasnapshoot \
        --source-disk instance-2 \
        --snapshot-type STANDARD \
        --source-disk-zone asia-southeast2-a
   

   • sasnapshoot is the name of the snapshot.

   • --source-disk specifies the disk you want to snapshot.

   • --snapshot-type defines the type of snapshot (STANDARD).

   • --source-disk-zone is the zone where the source disk is located.

2. Create an Image from the Snapshot:

   After creating the snapshot, convert it into an image:

    gcloud compute images create serviceassuranceimages \
        --source-snapshot=sasnapshoot
   

   • serviceassuranceimages is the name of the new image created from the snapshot.

3. Grant Access to the Image:

   Ensure that the new user or project has the necessary permissions to access the image. Assign the user.image role via IAM.

3. Creating VM Instances in the Destination Project

Destination Project:

To create a VM instance in a new project using the image from the source project:

gcloud compute instances create ramatest \
    --image-project rama-lab \
    --image serviceassuranceimages

In this command:

• ramatest is the name of the new VM instance.

• --image-project specifies the project where the image is stored.

• --image refers to the image created from the snapshot.

4. Example Implementation: A Full Migration

Here’s a complete example of migrating a VM from one project to another:

Source Project:

1. Create Snapshot:

    gcloud compute snapshots create exportedsnapshoot \
        --source-disk newvmsa-instance \
        --snapshot-type STANDARD \
        --source-disk-zone asia-southeast2-a
   

2. Create Image from Snapshot:

    gcloud compute images create exportedserviceassuranceimages \
        --source-snapshot=exportedsnapshoot
   

Destination Project:

1. Create VM Instance:

    gcloud compute instances create serviceassurancevm \
        --image-project zeta-crossbar-371709 \
        --image exportedserviceassuranceimages
   

Conclusion

Migrating VMs across Google Cloud projects involves creating snapshots, converting them to images, and deploying new VM instances using these images. By following these steps, you can efficiently manage and transfer your VMs while ensuring they retain their configurations and data. This process is essential for maintaining a flexible and scalable cloud infrastructure, allowing you to optimize resource utilization and project management.