Set the image version in an image family

Use image families to simplify image versioning. Add an image to an image family to set it as the most recent image version. If you determine that you must roll back the image family to a previous image version, deprecate the most recent image in the family.

For best practices when working with image families, see Image families best practices.

Optionally, you can specify the image's storage location by using the Google Cloud console, the gcloud compute images create command with the --storage-location flag, or the images().insert method.

Before you begin

  • Read the Images document.
  • If you haven't already, set up authentication. Authentication verifies your identity for access to Google Cloud services and APIs. To run code or samples from a local development environment, you can authenticate to Compute Engine by selecting one of the following options:

    Select the tab for how you plan to use the samples on this page:

    Console

    When you use the Google Cloud console to access Google Cloud services and APIs, you don't need to set up authentication.

    gcloud

    1. Install the Google Cloud CLI. After installation, initialize the Google Cloud CLI by running the following command: 

      gcloud init

      If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.

    2. Set a default region and zone.

    REST

    To use the REST API samples on this page in a local development environment, you use the credentials you provide to the gcloud CLI.

      Install the Google Cloud CLI. After installation, initialize the Google Cloud CLI by running the following command: 

      gcloud init

      If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.

    For more information, see Authenticate for using REST in the Google Cloud authentication documentation.

Set the image version in an image family

Console

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Create an image page.

    Go to Create an image

  2. Specify the Name of your image. For example, image-v1.

  3. Specify the Source from which you want to create an image. This can be a persistent disk, a snapshot, another image, or a disk.raw file in Cloud Storage.

  4. If you are creating an image from a disk attached to a running VM, check Keep instance running to confirm that you want to create the image while the VM is running. You can prepare your VM before creating the image.

  5. In the Based on source disk location (default) drop-down list, specify the location to store the image. For example, specify us to store the image in the us multi-region, or us-central1 to store it in the us-central1 region. If you do not make a selection, Compute Engine stores the image in the multi-region closest to your image's source location.

  6. Specify the image Family for the new image. For example, add my-image-family to organize the image as part of an image family.

  7. Optional: specify other image properties:

    • Description: a description for your custom image.
    • Label: a label to group together resources.

  8. Specify the encryption key. You can choose between a Google-owned and Google-managed encryption key, a Cloud Key Management Service (Cloud KMS) key or a customer- supplied encryption (CSEK) key. If no encryption key is specified, images are encrypted using a Google-owned and Google-managed encryption key.

  9. Click Create to create the image.

gcloud 

gcloud compute images create image-v1 \
    --source-disk disk-1 \
    --source-disk-zone us-central1-f \
    --family my-image-family

The image family points to image-v1. Add a second image to the family:

gcloud compute images create image-v2 \
    --source-disk disk-2 \
    --source-disk-zone us-central1-f \
    --family my-image-family

REST

Make a POST request to the images().insert method. Specify the image family in the request body.

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/global/images

{
  "name": "image-v2",
  "sourceDisk": "/zones/us-central1-f/disks/disk-2",
  "family":"my-image-family",

}

The image family points to image-v2 because it is the most recent image that you added to the image family.

gcloud

You can see which image a family points to by running the gcloud compute images describe-from-family command.

For example:

gcloud compute images describe-from-family my-image-family

family: my-image-family
id: '8904691942610171306'
kind: compute#image
name: image-v2
selfLink: https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/my-project/global/images/image-v2
sourceDisk: https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/my-project/zones/us-central1-f/disks/disk-v2
sourceDiskId: '1677449456001963379'
sourceType: RAW
status: READY

REST

Make a GET request to the images().getFromFamily method. Specify the image family in the request body.

GET https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/global/images/family

{
  "resourceId":"my-image-family",

}

If you determine that you must roll back the image family so that it no longer points to image-v2, deprecate image-v2 and the family will again point to image-v1.

gcloud compute images deprecate image-v2 \
    --state DEPRECATED \
    --replacement image-v1

Check to make sure that the image family is pointing to image-v1.

gcloud compute images describe-from-family my-image-family

family: my-image-family
id: '2741732787056801255'
kind: compute#image
name: image-v1
selfLink: https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/my-project/global/images/image-v1
sourceDisk: https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/my-project/zones/us-central1-f/disks/disk-v1
sourceDiskId: '1677449456001963379'
sourceType: RAW
status: READY