After you discover and protect the Compute Engine instances or import Persistent Disk snapshot images, you can mount the backup image to an existing or as a new instance within the same or to a different project.
Mount is an easy way to quickly access your backup data. When you mount a Compute Engine backup image, it moves data from snapshot to Persistent Disk.
Mount allows you to access your Compute Engine instance backup images in two ways:
Mount Compute Engine backup image to an existing instance: This allows you to access a Compute Engine instance backup image on any existing Compute Engine instance.
Mount Compute Engine backup image as a new instance: This allows you to clone a Compute Engine instance from the backup image.
It can be used in various scenarios:
- Migrate the instance from one project to another.
- Clone instance to another project for development and testing teams for debugging.
- In a disaster recovery, to recover source instance in a different project without changing the instance name.
Before mounting a backup image, make sure you have all the required permissions. See Permissions for details.
To mount a Compute Engine backup image as an existing or new Compute Engine
instance, where the source disk is using customer-managed encryption keys
(CMEK), you need to copy the service account name of the Compute Engine
service agent from the target project and add it in the source project and
assign the CryptoKey Encrypter/Decrypter role as detailed in
Permissions to mount Compute Engine instance with customer managed encryption keys.
Mount Compute Engine backup image to an existing Compute Engine instance
This feature allows you to mount the backup image of a selected Compute Engine instance to any existing Compute Engine instance, in any project, for quick data access.
Use these instructions to mount a Compute Engine instance backup image to an existing instance:
- Click App Manager and select Applications from the drop-down menu.
- Filter applications by Compute Engine Instance type.
Select the Compute Engine instance that you want to mount to access the data, right-click and select Access from the drop-down menu.
The Access page opens listing captured backup images in the timeline ramp view. For more information on the view, see Access the timeline ramp view of an image.
Select a backup image and then select Mount from the list of access operations. The Mount page opens where the Mount to Existing Compute Engine Instance option is selected by default.
From the Cloud Credentials Name drop-down, select a credential. Note: If you do not find the credential you are looking for, add a new credential. See Add Cloud credentials.
Select the Project Name to mount the new instance to.
Select the Region and Zone where the instance is located, that you want to mount the backup image to.
From the Instance Name drop-down, select the Compute Engine instance where you want the instance backup image to be mounted for accessing the data. You can mount the backup image either on the same instance, the source from where the backup was captured, or a different instance.
From Select Volumes To Mount, select a single volume or multiple volumes to mount. By default, all volumes are selected. You can also select the Disk Type that best suits your needs. The disk type allows you to select the type of underlying block storage that is used for the recovered data from the backup images.
Click Mount. A job is submitted to mount the image to the selected Compute Engine instance.
Once the mount job is complete, the image becomes active and data from the backup image is accessible on the targeted instance.
Mount Compute Engine instance backup image as a new instance
This feature allows you to mount the backup image of a selected Compute Engine instance to a new Compute Engine instance (in any project) for quick data access.
The management console allows you to restore a local solid-state drive (SSD) VM only if the source VM was configured with local SSD during VM creation. Local solid-state drives (SSDs) are physically attached to the server that hosts your VM instance. Local SSDs are suitable only for temporary storage such as caches, processing space, or low value data. For details, see local SSDs and Create a VM with a local SSD. You cannot restore a VM until the source VM is deleted because a VM with local SSD cannot be powered off when the VM instance is running.
Use these instructions to mount a Compute Engine instance backup image to a new instance:
- Click App Manager and select Applications from the drop-down menu.
- Filter applications by Compute Engine Instance type.
Select the Compute Engine instance that you want to mount to access the data, right-click and select Access from the drop-down menu.
The Access page opens listing captured backup images in the timeline ramp view. For more information on the view, see Access the timeline ramp view of an image.
Select a backup image and then select Mount from the list of access operations.
The Mount page opens.
Select the Mount As New Compute Engine Instance option.
From the Cloud Credentials Name drop-down, select a credential. If you do not find the credential you are looking for, add a new credential. See Add cloud credentials.
Select the Project Name where you want to mount the new instance.
Select a Region and Zone where the instance is located.
For Instance Name, enter the name for the new instance or use the source name. Note that if you use the source name, it needs to be unique in a project.
For Sole Tenancy, select the sole tenancy node or node group to mount the backup image. The sole tenancy drop-down lists all the sole tenant nodes or node groups available for selected project and zone. Sole-tenant nodes are physical Compute Engine machines used to host project's VM. See Sole-tenancy overview for details.
For Machine Type, select a type with the hardware resources needed for the new instance from the drop-down list. A machine type is a set of virtualized hardware resources available to a virtual machine (VM) instance, including the system memory size, virtual CPU (vCPU) count, and Persistent Disk limits.
To create the new VM with the default Compute Engine service account, enable Use Default Compute Engine Service Account. If this option is disabled, the new VM uses the service account present in the backup image.
In Network tags, specify one or more tags.
In Labels, enter the key-value pairs to help you organize the new instance. Each entry must be all lowercase with no spaces. To add a new label entry, click + and enter a label key and value for each label you want to add.
Configure Network Interfaces as the following:
- NETWORK: This shows the network for the selected NIC. ETH0 uses the network selected above. To add additional NICs and networks, click Add NIC link to the right.
- INTERNAL IPV4 IP: Select either Auto or Manual Assign. If you select Manual Assign, enter IP address.
- SUBNET: Select a subnet.
- EXTERNAL IPV4 IP: Select either None or Auto Assign.
From Select Volumes To Mount, select a single volume or multiple volumes to mount. By default, all volumes are selected. You can also change the Disk Type that best suits your needs. The disk type allows you to select the type of underlying block storage that is used for the recovered data from the backup images.
Unselect Power On if you want to power off the Compute Engine instance after mount is complete. By default, the instance is created in the powered on state.
Select Provision Local SSD to provision new local SSD disks to the recovered VM with the same configuration as the source.
Click Mount. A job is submitted to mount the image to the selected Compute Engine instance.
Once the mount job is complete, the image becomes active and the data from the backup image is accessible on the mounted instance.
Impact of mounting instances where disks are encrypted with CMEK
If you are mounting a Compute Engine instance that has attached disks that are encrypted with Customer Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK), then be aware of the following:
- The mounted disks are encrypted with the same key version that the selected snapshot of the disks is encrypted with. This may result in the disks attached to the mounted instance being encrypted with a newer key version than the source instance. See Rotate your Cloud KMS encryption key for a persistent disk.
- If the key version in use by the snapshot is disabled or deleted then the mount operation fails. See Impact of disabling or deleting CMEKs.
View key version
To determine which key version is in use by a by a snapshot image, follow these steps:
- Go to Back up & Recover > Recover.
- Right-click the relevant application, select Access and then identify both the image name and consistency date of the relevant image from the access page.
- Now go to the Google Cloud console Compute Engine > Snapshots.
- Locate the snapshot for the relevant disk with a matching snapshot creation time.
- Select the snapshot to view the details view for that snapshot.
- Scroll down to the Key ID field. You can validate this by matching the snapshot by reviewing the snapshot label which should contain the image name.