You can restore images of Compute Engine instances protected using the management console. When you restore an image, the backup plan management of the instance is disabled in the App Manager.
The management console lets 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.
Before restoring a backup image, make sure you have all the required permissions. See Permissions for details.
Use these instructions to restore a point-in-time image from a managed instance:
Click App Manager and select Applications from the drop-down menu.
The Applications page opens.
Filter applications by type Compute Engine.
Select the Compute Engine instance that has the image you want to restore, and then choose Access from the drop-down list at the bottom of the Applications page.
The Access page opens listing captured images appear in the timeline ramp view. For more information on the view, see Access the timeline ramp view of an image.
Select the image to restore, then select Restore from the list of access operations.
The Restore page opens.
From the Cloud Credential Name drop-down, select an existing credential. For more information, see Manage Cloud credentials.
The Project Name, Instance Name, Zone, and Sole Tenancy are pre-populated from the metadata of the backup image. You cannot modify these properties.
Optionally, enable the Update Source Labels and Network Tags from Backup option.
From Select Volumes To Restore, select a single volume or multiple volumes to restore. By default, all volumes are selected.
Unselect Power On if you want to power off the Compute Engine instance after the restore is complete.
Select Provision Local SSD to provision new local SSD disks to the recovered VM with the same configuration as the source.
Click Restore.
A warning dialog opens.
Read the warning dialog and then enter DATA LOSS to confirm.
A second warning appears.
Enter OVERWRITE OTHER APPS to confirm the restore operation.
The restore job starts. You can verify that the restore operation is successful by viewing the job status in the Monitor.
Impact of restoring instances where disks are encrypted with CMEK
If you are restoring a Compute Engine instance that has attached disks that are encrypted with Customer Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK), then be aware of the following:
- The restored disks will be encrypted with the same key version that the selected snapshot of the disks is encrypted with. This may result in the instance being not only restored, but also encrypted with a newer key version. 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 restore operation will fail. See Impact of disabling or deleting CMEKs.
View key version
To determine which key version is in use by a snapshot image:
- 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.
- Go to the Key ID field. You can validate this by matching the snapshot by reviewing the snapshot label which should contain the image name.
The Backup and DR Compute Engine guide
- Check for the cloud credentials
- Discover and protect Compute Engine instances
- Mount backup images of Compute Engine instances
- Restore a Compute Engine instance
- Import Persistent Disk snapshot images