Locating IP addresses for an instance

Learn how to locate external and internal IP addresses for your instance.

Before you begin

  • If you haven't already, set up authentication. Authentication is the process by which your identity is verified for access to Google Cloud services and APIs. To run code or samples from a local development environment, you can authenticate to Compute Engine as follows.

    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, then initialize it by running the following command: 

      gcloud init
    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, then initialize it by running the following command: 

      gcloud init

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

Permissions required for this task

To perform this task, you must have the following permissions:

  • compute.instances.get on the instance

Viewing IP addresses

You view the internal and external IP addresses for your instance through either the Google Cloud console, the Google Cloud CLI, or REST.

Console

In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page. If the VM instance has an external IP address, it appears under the External IP column. If a VM does not have an external IP address, you can assign one.

Go to VM instances

VM instances page showing internal and external IPs.

gcloud

To view the internal and external IP addresses for your instance using gcloud compute, use the instances list sub-command.

gcloud compute instances list

Your output should resemble the following: 

NAME              ZONE            MACHINE_TYPE     PREEMPTIBLE  INTERNAL_IP  EXTERNAL_IP    STATUS
hulk              us-central1-c   m1-ultramem-160  true         192.0.2.1                   RUNNING
my-instance       us-central1-c   e2-standard-2                 192.51.100.1  203.224.0.113 RUNNING

To view the internal or external IP address for a specific instance using gcloud compute, use the instances describe sub-command with a --format flag to filter the output. For example:

  • To view the internal IP for a specific instance, run the following command:

    gcloud compute instances describe instance-name \
  --format='get(networkInterfaces[0].networkIP)'

192.51.100.1

  • To view the external IP for a specific instance, run the following command:

    gcloud compute instances describe instance-name \
  --format='get(networkInterfaces[0].accessConfigs[0].natIP)'

203.224.0.113

Replace instance-name with the name of the instance whose internal or external IP you want to view.

REST

Make a GET request to the instances.get method.

 GET https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/project-id/zones/zone/instances/instance-name

Replace the following:

  • project-id: The project ID for this query.
  • zone: The zone for the instance that you want to query.
  • instance-name: The name of the instance resource to return.

Your response body resembles the following snippet:

{
  ...
  "networkInterfaces": [
    {
      ...
      "networkIP": "192.51.100.1",
      ...
      "accessConfigs": [
        {
          ...
          "name": "external-nat",
          "natIP": "203.224.0.113",
          ...
        }
      ],
      ...
    }
  ],
  ...
}

The following fields contain the required information:

  • networkIP is the assigned internal IP address.
  • natIP is the assigned external IP address.

Python 

from enum import Enum
from typing import List

from google.cloud import compute_v1


def get_instance(project_id: str, zone: str, instance_name: str) -> compute_v1.Instance:
    """
    Get information about a VM instance in the given zone in the specified project.

    Args:
        project_id: project ID or project number of the Cloud project you want to use.
        zone: name of the zone you want to use. For example: “us-west3-b”
        instance_name: name of the VM instance you want to query.
    Returns:
        An Instance object.
    """
    instance_client = compute_v1.InstancesClient()
    instance = instance_client.get(
        project=project_id, zone=zone, instance=instance_name
    )

    return instance


class IPType(Enum):
    INTERNAL = "internal"
    EXTERNAL = "external"
    IP_V6 = "ipv6"


def get_instance_ip_address(
    instance: compute_v1.Instance, ip_type: IPType
) -> List[str]:
    """
    Retrieves the specified type of IP address (ipv6, internal or external) of a specified Compute Engine instance.

    Args:
        instance (compute_v1.Instance): instance to get
        ip_type (IPType): The type of IP address to retrieve (ipv6, internal or external).

    Returns:
        List[str]: Requested type IP addresses of the instance.
    """
    ips = []
    if not instance.network_interfaces:
        return ips
    for interface in instance.network_interfaces:
        if ip_type == IPType.EXTERNAL:
            for config in interface.access_configs:
                if config.type_ == "ONE_TO_ONE_NAT":
                    ips.append(config.nat_i_p)
        elif ip_type == IPType.IP_V6:
            for ipv6_config in getattr(interface, "ipv6_access_configs", []):
                if ipv6_config.type_ == "DIRECT_IPV6":
                    ips.append(ipv6_config.external_ipv6)

        elif ip_type == IPType.INTERNAL:
            # Internal IP is directly available in the network interface
            ips.append(interface.network_i_p)
    return ips

Java 


import com.google.cloud.compute.v1.AccessConfig;
import com.google.cloud.compute.v1.AccessConfig.Type;
import com.google.cloud.compute.v1.GetInstanceRequest;
import com.google.cloud.compute.v1.Instance;
import com.google.cloud.compute.v1.InstancesClient;
import com.google.cloud.compute.v1.NetworkInterface;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

public class GetVmAddress {

  public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
    // TODO(developer): Replace these variables before running the sample.
    // Project ID or project number of the Google Cloud project you want to use.
    String projectId = "your-project-id";
    // Instance ID of the Google Cloud project you want to use.
    String instanceId = "your-instance-id";
    // IPType you want to search.
    IpType ipType = IpType.INTERNAL;

    getVmAddress(projectId, instanceId, ipType);
  }

  // Retrieves the specified type of IP address
  // (ipv6, internal or external) of a specified Compute Engine instance.
  public static List<String> getVmAddress(String projectId, String instanceId, IpType ipType)
          throws IOException {
    List<String> result = new ArrayList<>();
    Instance instance = getInstance(projectId, instanceId);

    for (NetworkInterface networkInterface : instance.getNetworkInterfacesList()) {
      if (ipType == IpType.EXTERNAL) {
        for (AccessConfig accessConfig : networkInterface.getAccessConfigsList()) {
          if (accessConfig.getType().equals(Type.ONE_TO_ONE_NAT.name())) {
            result.add(accessConfig.getNatIP());
          }
        }
      } else if (ipType == IpType.IP_V6) {
        for (AccessConfig accessConfig : networkInterface.getAccessConfigsList()) {
          if (accessConfig.hasExternalIpv6()
                  && accessConfig.getType().equals(Type.DIRECT_IPV6.name())) {
            result.add(accessConfig.getExternalIpv6());
          }
        }
      } else if (ipType == IpType.INTERNAL) {
        result.add(networkInterface.getNetworkIP());
      }
    }

    return result;
  }

  private static Instance getInstance(String projectId, String instanceId) throws IOException {
    // Initialize client that will be used to send requests. This client only needs to be created
    // once, and can be reused for multiple requests.
    try (InstancesClient instancesClient = InstancesClient.create()) {
      GetInstanceRequest request = GetInstanceRequest.newBuilder()
              .setInstance(instanceId)
              .setProject(projectId)
              .setZone("us-central1-b")
              .build();
      return instancesClient.get(request);
    }
  }

  public enum IpType {
    INTERNAL("internal"),
    EXTERNAL("external"),
    IP_V6("ipv6");

    private final String type;

    IpType(String type) {
      this.type = type;
    }

    public String getType() {
      return type;
    }
  }
}