Google Compute Engine recover from terminated status - google-compute-engine

Question

My free trial period has been cancelled but I would like to continue using my existing engines.
The console says my instance is terminated and is no longer running.
Rebooting the instance gives "The resource .... is not ready' error.
How can I continue using my engines with exact same IP setting and other configurations?

Answer 1

Once an instance is in a 'TERMINATED' state it can no longer be booted. You will need to recreate an instance with the same configuration, IP address and boot disk as you indicate. See this FAQ for more information about the terminated state: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/troubleshooting#terminate
To retain your existing IP address you will need to promote it to a static IP address resource. You can then reassign this address resource to your new instance.
$ gcloud compute addresses create address-name --addresses IP_ADDRESS --region REGION
See this article for the exact steps:
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances-and-network#promote_ephemeral_ip
To migrate the existing data on your disk you could create a snapshot and then restore that snapshot when creating a new instance:
$ gcloud compute disks snapshot DISK
See this article for the detailed steps:
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/disks#creating_snapshots
Finally to migrate all the associated configuration and metadata you could use the describe subcommand in the Cloud SDK:
$ gcloud compute instances describe INSTANCE
This would print out the entire configuration for your existing instance which you can then use to recreate in your new instance.
The exact steps are quite similar to the process of migrating an instance from one zone to another. You could essentially follow the guide for that process but recreate your new instance in the same zone if you prefer not to move the location of your data. The steps for migrating an instance across zones can be found here:
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances#moving_an_instance_between_zones