Set up VM Manager

On Compute Engine you can manage the operating systems that are running on your virtual machines (VMs) by using VM Manager.

You can enable VM Manager for individual VMs, or for a project, or for all projects in a folder or organization. To review the steps needed to set up your VMs to use VM Manager, see Setup overview.

After setting up VM Manager, you can view audit logs for API operations performed with the OS Config API, see Viewing VM Manager audit logs.

Note: If you already have VM Manager set up and want to update your environment to use the features available for OS inventory management and OS policies, see Updating VM Manager.

Before you begin

• Review OS Config quotas for your project.
• If you haven't already, then 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 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, then initialize it by running the following command:

     gcloud init

     Note: If you installed the gcloud CLI previously, make sure you have the latest version by running gcloud components update.
  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.

Supported operating systems

For the full list of operating system versions that support VM Manager, see Operating system details. If the OS config agent is not available for a particular operating system, you cannot enable VM Manager for a VM that runs this operating system.

Enable VM Manager using an organization policy

Preview

This product or feature is subject to the "Pre-GA Offerings Terms" in the General Service Terms section of the Service Specific Terms. Pre-GA products and features are available "as is" and might have limited support. For more information, see the launch stage descriptions.

You can automatically enable VM Manager for all new VMs in your organization, folder, or project by using the Require OS Config organization policy.

When the Require OS Config boolean constraint is set up, the following conditions are applied:

• enable-osconfig=TRUE is included in the project metadata for all new projects.
• Requests that set enable-osconfig to FALSE in instance or project metadata are rejected, for new and existing VMs and projects.
• This organization policy does not change the enable-osconfig metadata value to TRUE for VMs or for the projects that were created before enabling the policy. If you want to enable VM Manager on those VMs or projects, we recommend that you update the metadata. For more information, see Set the metadata values.

Note: When the OS Config organization policy is enabled, you can still use the osconfig-disabled-features metadata to disable one or more VM Manager features.

Enable OS Config organization policy

Permissions required for this task

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

• resourcemanager.organizationAdmin role. For more information see, Access control for organizations using IAM.
• To learn more about managing policies at the organization level, see Add an organization policy administrator.

To enable the OS Config policy, you can set the Require OS Config constraint on the entire organization, folders, or specific projects by using either the Google Cloud console or the Google Cloud CLI.

Console

To set the OS Config organization policy from the console, complete the following steps:

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Organization policies page.

   Go to Organization policies

2. From the project picker, select the project, folder, or organization for which you want to edit organization policies.

3. The Organization policies page displays a filterable list of organization policy constraints that are available.

4. Select Require OS Config constraint from the list of constraints. The Policy details page that appears describes the constraint and provides information about how the constraint is applied.

5. To update the organization policy for this resource, click Manage policy.

6. On the Edit policy page, select Override parent's policy.

7. Select Add a rule.

8. Under Enforcement, select whether enforcement of this organization policy should be on.

9. To enforce the policy, click Set policy.

gcloud

To set the OS Config organization policy, use the gcloud beta resource-manager org-policies enable-enforce command.

1. Find your organization ID.

   gcloud organizations list

2. Set the constraint in your organization. Replace organization-id with your your organization ID.

   gcloud beta resource-manager org-policies enable-enforce compute.requireOsConfig \
       --organization=organization-id
   

You can also apply the OS Config organization policy to a folder or a project with the --folder or the --project flags, and the folder ID and project ID, respectively.

For folders, run the following command:

gcloud beta resource-manager org-policies enable-enforce compute.requireOsConfig \
    --folder=folder-id

For projects, run the following command:

gcloud beta resource-manager org-policies enable-enforce compute.requireOsConfig \
    --project=project-id

Replace the following:

• folder-id: your folder ID.
• project-id: your project ID.

Enable VM Manager in a project

Caution: To create patch jobs or OS policy assignments using VM Manager, you need to grant users the required IAM permissions. These permissions give them access to run code on VMs, which can pose a potential security risk.

To mitigate this risk, we recommend that you follow the principle of least privilege and provide only the required access to each user. If you don't plan to use VM Manager in your Google Cloud project, we recommend that you disable VM Manager by doing the following:

Disable the patch and OS policy features by setting the project-level metadata.

Disable VM Manager by setting the enable-osconfig metadata to FALSE.

Disable the OS Config agent.

To enable VM Manager in your project, you have two options:

• Automatic enablement: applies to your entire Google Cloud project. You complete automatic enablement from the Google Cloud console. You might still need to manually complete some steps.

• Manual enablement: can be done per VM or for the entire Google Cloud project.

Manual

To manually set up VM Manager, complete the following steps:

1. In your Google Cloud project, enable the OS Config API.
2. On each VM, check if the OS Config agent is installed. If the agent is not already installed, install the OS Config agent.
3. On either your project or on each VM, set instance metadata for the OS Config agent. This step is needed to make the OS Config agent active in your VM or project.
4. Verify that all VMs have an attached service account. You don't need to grant any IAM roles to this service account. VM Manager uses this service account to sign requests to the API service.
5. If your VM is running within a private VPC network and does not have public internet access, enable Private Google Access.
6. If you use HTTP proxy for your VMs, configure an HTTP proxy.
7. Optional. On either your project or on each VM, disable the features that you don't need.

Automatic

The first time you navigate to any of the VM Manager pages in the Google Cloud console, you can choose to automatically enable VM Manager.

If you follow the guided steps, you can use the automatic enablement to complete the following:

• Enable VM Manager (OS Config API) on the Google Cloud project
• Activate OS Config agents on all VMs in the Google Cloud project that have the agent installed

Enable the OS Config service API

In your Google Cloud project, enable the OS Config API.

Console

In the Google Cloud console, enable VM Manager (OS Config API).

Enable the OS Config API

gcloud

To enable the API run the following command:

gcloud services enable osconfig.googleapis.com

Check if the OS Config agent is installed

The OS Config agent is installed by default on CentOS, Container-Optimized OS (COS), Debian, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Rocky Linux, SLES, Ubuntu, and Windows Server images that have a build date of v20200114 or later. For information about the versions of operating systems with the OS Config agent installed, see Operating system details. These agents run idly until you enable the agent metadata, and enable the service API.

Linux

To check whether your Linux VM has the agent installed, run the following command:

sudo systemctl status google-osconfig-agent

If the agent is installed and running, the output resembles the following:

google-osconfig-agent.service - Google OSConfig Agent
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/google-osconfig-agent.service; enabled; vendor preset:
Active: active (running) since Wed 2020-01-15 00:14:22 UTC; 6min ago
Main PID: 369 (google_osconfig)
 Tasks: 8 (limit: 4374)
Memory: 102.7M
CGroup: /system.slice/google-osconfig-agent.service
        └─369 /usr/bin/google_osconfig_agent

If the agent is not installed, install the OS Config agent.

Windows

To check whether your Windows VM has the agent installed, run the following command:

PowerShell Get-Service google_osconfig_agent

If the agent is installed and running, the output resembles the following:

Status   Name               DisplayName
------   ----               -----------
Running  google_osconfig... Google OSConfig Agent

If the agent is not installed, install the OS Config agent.

Install the OS Config agent

Before you follow these steps to install the agent, check if the agent is already running on your VM.

On each VM, install the OS Config agent. You can install the OS Config agent by using one of the following options:

• Install the agent manually using the terminal.
• Use a startup script on your VMs.
• Automate the installation of OS Config on multiple VMs by using a Google Cloud Observability agent policy.

Install the agent manually

Use this option to install the OS Config agent on an existing VM.

To install the agent, complete the following steps:

1. Connect to the VM that you want to install the OS Config agent on.

2. Install the OS Config agent.

   Windows Server

   To install the OS Config agent on a Windows server, run the following command:

   googet -noconfirm install google-osconfig-agent
   

   Ubuntu

   To install the OS Config agent on an Ubuntu VM, run the following commands:

   1. Set up the Ubuntu repository.

      • For Ubuntu 20.04 and later versions, run the following commands:

        1. Add the Ubuntu repository.

           sudo su -c "echo 'deb http://packages.cloud.google.com/apt google-compute-engine-focal-stable main' > \
           /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-compute-engine.list"
           

        2. Import the Google Cloud public key.

           curl https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | \
           sudo apt-key add -
           

      • For Ubuntu 18.04 and later versions, run the following commands:

        1. Add the Ubuntu repository.

           sudo su -c "echo 'deb http://packages.cloud.google.com/apt google-compute-engine-bionic-stable main' > \
           /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-compute-engine.list"
           

        2. Import the Google Cloud public key.

           curl https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | \
           sudo apt-key add -
           

      • For Ubuntu 16.04, run the following commands:

        1. Add the Ubuntu repository.

           sudo su -c "echo 'deb http://packages.cloud.google.com/apt google-compute-engine-xenial-stable main'> \
           /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-compute-engine.list"
           

        2. Import the Google Cloud public key.

           curl https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | \
           sudo apt-key add -
           

   2. Install the OS Config agent.

      sudo apt update
      sudo apt -y install google-osconfig-agent
      

   Debian

   To install the OS Config agent on a Debian VM, run the following commands:

   sudo apt update
   sudo apt -y install google-osconfig-agent
   

   Note: If you are using a VM instance that was not created from a Google-provided image or you see the error E: Unable to locate package google-osconfig-agent, you need to add the Google Cloud repository and public key.

   Adding the Google Cloud repository and public key

   If you are using a VM instance that was not created from a Google-provided image or got a "unable to locate package" error message, complete the following steps to add the Google Cloud repository and import the public key.

   After you add the repository and import the key, you can then run the commands to install the OS Config agent.

   • For Debian 9 (Stretch), run the following commands:

     1. Add the Debian repository.

        sudo su -c "echo 'deb http://packages.cloud.google.com/apt \
        google-compute-engine-stretch-stable main'> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-compute-engine.list"
        

     2. Import the Google Cloud public key.

        curl https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | \
        sudo apt-key add -
        

   • For Debian 10 (Buster), run the following commands:

     1. Add the Debian repository.

        sudo su -c "echo 'deb http://packages.cloud.google.com/apt \
        google-compute-engine-buster-stable main'> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-compute-engine.list"
        

     2. Import the Google Cloud public key.

        curl https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | \
        sudo apt-key add -
        

   RHEL/CentOS/Rocky

   To install the OS Config agent on a RHEL 7/8, CentOS 7/8 VM or Rocky Linux 8/9, run the following command:

   sudo yum -y install google-osconfig-agent
   

   SLES/openSUSE

   To install the OS Config agent on a SLES or openSUSE VM, run the following commands:

   1. Set up the SLES repository.

      • For SLES 12, run the following command:

        sudo su -c "cat > /etc/zypp/repos.d/google-compute-engine.repo <<EOM
        [google-compute-engine]
        name=Google Compute Engine
        baseurl=https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/repos/google-compute-engine-sles12-stable
        enabled=1
        gpgcheck=1
        repo_gpgcheck=0
        gpgkey=https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/doc/yum-key.gpg
          https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/doc/rpm-package-key.gpg
        EOM"
        

      • For SLES 15 and OpenSUSE 15, run the following command:

        sudo su -c "cat > /etc/zypp/repos.d/google-compute-engine.repo <<EOM
        [google-compute-engine]
        name=Google Compute Engine
        baseurl=https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/repos/google-compute-engine-sles15-stable
        enabled=1
        gpgcheck=1
        repo_gpgcheck=0
        gpgkey=https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/doc/yum-key.gpg
          https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/doc/rpm-package-key.gpg
        EOM"
        
        

   2. Import the GPG keys for Google Cloud.

      sudo rpm --import https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/doc/yum-key.gpg \
      --import https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/doc/rpm-package-key.gpg
      

   3. Install the OS Config agent.

      sudo zypper -n --gpg-auto-import-keys install --from google-compute-engine google-osconfig-agent
      

Install the agent using a startup script

You can also use the manual installation commands to create a startup script that installs the OS Config agent during VM creation.

1. Copy the manual commands for your operating system.

2. Provide the startup script to your VM creation method.

   For example, if you are using the gcloud compute instances create command to create a Debian 10 VM, your command resembles the following:

   gcloud compute instances create VM_NAME \
      --image-family=debian-10 --image-project=debian-cloud \
      --metadata startup-script='#! /bin/bash
      apt update
      apt -y install google-osconfig-agent'

   Replace VM_NAME with the name of your VM.

3. Verify that the startup script completes. To verify whether the startup script completes, review the logs or check the serial console.

Set the metadata values

You can either set instance metadata on each VM or project metadata that applies to all VMs in your project.

On your Google Cloud project or VM, set the enable-osconfig metadata value to TRUE. Setting the enable-osconfig metadata value to TRUE enables the following:

• Patch
• OS policies
• OS inventory management
  • For the earlier version of OS inventory management, you must also set the enable-guest-attributes metadata value to TRUE. If both metadata values are not set, the dashboard shows no data for the VM. This is not needed for the later version. For information about the two OS inventory management versions, see OS inventory management versions.

Pro Tip: After you have set the enable-osconfig metadata value to TRUE, you can disable the features that you don't need.

Console

You can apply the metadata values on your Google Cloud projects or VMs using one of the following options:

• Option 1: Set enable-osconfig in project-wide metadata, so that it applies to all of the VMs in your project.

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Metadata page.

     Go to Metadata

  2. Click Edit.

  3. Add the following metadata entry:

     Key: enable-osconfig
     Value: TRUE

     For the earlier version of OS inventory management, set both enable-osconfig and enable-guest-attributes:

     • Key: enable-osconfig
       Value: TRUE
     • Key: enable-guest-attributes
       Value: TRUE

  4. Click Save to apply the changes.

• Option 2: Set enable-osconfig in VM metadata when you create an instance.

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

     Go to Create an instance

  2. Specify the VM details.

  3. Expand the Advanced options section, and do the following:

     1. Expand the Management section.

     2. In the Metadata section, click Add item and add the following metadata entries:

        Key: enable-osconfig
        Value: TRUE.

        For the earlier version of OS inventory management, set both enable-osconfig and enable-guest-attributes:

        • Key: enable-osconfig
          Value: TRUE
        • Key: enable-guest-attributes
          Value: TRUE

  4. To create the VM, click Create.

• Option 3: Set enable-osconfig in metadata of an existing VM.

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page.

     Go to VM instances

  2. Click the name of the VM for which you want to set the metadata value.

  3. On the Instance details page, click Edit to edit the settings.

  4. Under Custom metadata, add the following metadata entries:

     Key: enable-osconfig
     Value: TRUE.

     For the earlier version of OS inventory management, set both enable-osconfig and enable-guest-attributes:

     • Key: enable-osconfig
       Value: TRUE
     • Key: enable-guest-attributes
       Value: TRUE

  5. Click Save to apply your changes to the VM.

gcloud

Use the project-info add-metadata or the instances add-metadata command with the --metadata=enable-osconfig=TRUE flag.

You can apply the metadata values on your projects or VMs using one of the following options:

• Option 1: Set enable-osconfig in project-wide metadata, so that it applies to all of the instances in your project:

  gcloud compute project-info add-metadata \
    --project PROJECT_ID \
    --metadata=enable-osconfig=TRUE
  

  For the earlier version of OS inventory management, set both enable-osconfig and enable-guest-attributes:

  gcloud compute project-info add-metadata \
    --project PROJECT_ID \
    --metadata=enable-guest-attributes=TRUE,enable-osconfig=TRUE
  

  Replace PROJECT_ID with your project ID.

• Option 2: Set enable-osconfig in metadata of an existing instance.

  gcloud compute instances add-metadata VM_NAME \
    --metadata=enable-osconfig=TRUE
  

  For the earlier version of OS inventory management, set both enable-osconfig and enable-guest-attributes:

  gcloud compute instances add-metadata VM_NAME \
    --metadata=enable-guest-attributes=TRUE,enable-osconfig=TRUE
  

  Replace VM_NAME with the name of your VM.

• Option 3: Set enable-osconfig in instance metadata when you create an instance.

  gcloud compute instances create VM_NAME \
    --metadata=enable-osconfig=TRUE
  

  For the earlier version of OS inventory management, set both enable-osconfig and enable-guest-attributes:

  gcloud compute instances create VM_NAME \
    --metadata=enable-guest-attributes=TRUE,enable-osconfig=TRUE
  

  Replace VM_NAME with the name of your VM.

REST

You can set the metadata value at either the Google Cloud project or instance level.

• For instructions on setting project-wide metadata, see setting project-wide custom metadata.
• For instructions on setting instance metadata, see setting instance metadata.

The following key-value pair is required as part of the metadata property:

• Key: enable-osconfig
  Value: TRUE

For the earlier version of OS inventory management, also add the following key-value pair:

• Key: enable-guest-attributes
  Value: TRUE

Configure an HTTP proxy

If you use an HTTP proxy for your VMs, run the following commands to set the http_proxy and https_proxy environment variables. You should also exclude the metadata server (169.254.169.254) by configuring the no_proxy environment variable so that the OS Config agent can access the local metadata server.

Linux

On Linux distributions that use systemd, as the root user, add the proxy environment variables to the google-osconfig-agent.service unit:

mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/google-osconfig-agent.service.d
cat >/etc/systemd/system/google-osconfig-agent.service.d/override.conf <<EOF
[Service]
Environment="http_proxy=http://PROXY_IP:PROXY_PORT" \
  "https_proxy=http://PROXY_IP:PROXY_PORT" \
  "no_proxy=169.254.169.254,metadata,metadata.google.internal"
EOF

Replace PROXY_IP and PROXY_PORT with the IP address and port number of your proxy server, respectively.

Restart the OS Config agent service:

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart google-osconfig-agent

To confirm that the variables are set correctly, check the environment variables for the running agent:

tr '\0' '\n' < /proc/$(systemctl show -p MainPID --value google-osconfig-agent)/environ

Windows

Run the following commands from an administrator command prompt.

  setx http_proxy http://PROXY_IP:PROXY_PORT /m
  setx https_proxy http://PROXY_IP:PROXY_PORT /m
  setx no_proxy 169.254.169.254,metadata,metadata.google.internal /m

Replace PROXY_IP and PROXY_PORT with the IP address and port number of your proxy server, respectively.

Google recommends that you exclude *.googleapis.com by adding the no_proxy environment variable to avoid connection issues from the OS Config agent. If you want to connect only specific VMs to the OS Config agent, prefix the zone the VMs are in, and use the format [zone-name]-osconfig.googleapis.com. For example, us-central1-f-osconfig.googleapis.com.

Disable features that you don't need

Note: Disabling features is an optional step.

For features that you might not need, you can disable them by setting the following metadata values: osconfig-disabled-features=FEATURE1,FEATURE2.

Replace FEATURE1,FEATURE2 with any of the following values:

• OS inventory management: osinventory
• Patch and OS policies: tasks
• OS guest policies (beta): guestpolicies

Use one of the following methods to disable the metadata values.

Console

You can disable the metadata values on your Google Cloud projects or VMs by using one of the following options:

• Option 1: Disable feature in project-wide metadata so that it applies to all of the instances in your project.

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Metadata page.

     Go to Metadata

  2. Click Edit.

  3. Add the following metadata entry:

     Key: osconfig-disabled-features
     Value: FEATURE1,FEATURE2

     For example:
     Key: osconfig-disabled-features
     Value: osinventory,guestpolicies

  4. Click Save to apply the changes.

• Option 2: Disable feature in metadata of an existing VM.

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page.

     Go to VM instances

  2. Click the name of the VM on which you want to set the metadata value.

  3. On the Instance details page, click Edit to edit the VM settings.

  4. Under Custom metadata, add the following metadata entries:

     Key: osconfig-disabled-features
     Value: FEATURE1,FEATURE2

     For example:
     Key: osconfig-disabled-features
     Value: osinventory

  5. Click Save to apply your changes to the VM.

gcloud

Use the project-info add-metadata or the instances add-metadata gcloud command with the --metadata=osconfig-disabled-features flag.

If you are disabling multiple features, the flag must have the format --metadata=osconfig-disabled-features=FEATURE1,FEATURE2. See example 2.

Examples

Example 1 To disable Patch at the Google Cloud project level using the Google Cloud CLI, run the following command:

gcloud compute project-info add-metadata \
    --project PROJECT_ID \
    --metadata=osconfig-disabled-features=tasks

Example 2 To disable OS policies and OS inventory management at the project level using the Google Cloud CLI, run the following command:

gcloud compute project-info add-metadata \
    --project PROJECT_ID \
    --metadata=osconfig-disabled-features=osinventory,guestpolicies

Replace PROJECT_ID with your project ID.

REST

You can set the metadata value at either the Google Cloud project or instance level.

• For instructions on setting project-wide metadata, see setting project-wide custom metadata.
• For instructions on setting instance metadata, see setting instance metadata.

The following key-value pair is required as part of the metadata property:

• Key: osconfig-disabled-features
  
• Value: Can be any one or a combination of the following flags:
  • osinventory
  • tasks
  • guestpolicies

Requirements for an active OS Config agent

For the OS Config agent to be considered active and billable, it must satisfy all of the following requirements:

• VM Manager must be set up.

• The VM must be in RUNNING state and the OS Config agent must be communicating with the OS Config service.

  If a VM is stopped, suspended, or disconnected from the network, the agent on that VM is not counted as an active agent.

Verify the setup

After completing the setup procedure, you can verify the setup.

View VM Manager feature settings for your project

To verify whether all VM Manager features are enabled in your project, do the following:

gcloud

Use the gcloud compute os-config project-feature-settings describe command as follows:

gcloud compute os-config project-feature-settings describe \
    --project PROJECT_ID

The output of the command is similar to the following:

name: projects/my-project/locations/global/projectFeatureSettings
patchAndConfigFeatureSet: OSCONFIG_C

The value OSCONFIG_C represents the full VM Manager feature set and OSCONFIG_B represents the limited feature set.

REST

To view VM Manager features at the Google Cloud project, create a GET request to the projects.locations.global.getProjectFeatureSettings method.

   GET https://osconfig.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/projectFeatureSettings
   

Replace PROJECT_ID with your project ID.

If successful, the method returns the project feature settings as shown in the following example:

{
 "name": "projects/my-project/locations/global/projectFeatureSettings",
 "patchAndConfigFeatureSet": "OSCONFIG_C"
}

The value OSCONFIG_C represents the full VM Manager feature set and OSCONFIG_B represents the limited feature set.

Enable full VM Manager functionality

If VM Manager isn't enabled in your project and you install Ops Agent during VM creation, VM Manager is enabled in the limited mode. In this mode, VM Manager offers a subset of features for unlimited number of VMs at no cost. For example, you can view the OS policy assignments for your VMs on the OS policies page, but you cannot create or edit OS policy assignments.

To enable all VM Manager features for these VMs with Ops Agent installed, do the following:

Note: After you update the project feature settings, it can take up to 2 hours to propagate the changes to all the VMs, and for the changes to take effect.

Console

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the OS policies page.

Go to OS policies

1. Click Enable full VM Manager functionality to enable all VM Manager features.

   Note: If you want to enable VM Manager for all VMs in your project, set the enable-osconfig project-wide metadata to true. For more information, see Set the metadata values.

   

gcloud

To enable all VM Manager features for the Google Cloud project, use the gcloud compute os-config project-feature-settings update command:

gcloud compute os-config project-feature-settings update \
    --project PROJECT_ID \
    --patch-and-config-feature-set=full

REST

To enable all VM Manager features at the Google Cloud project level, send a PATCH request to the projprojects.locations.global.updateProjectFeatureSettings method.

   PATCH https://osconfig.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/projectFeatureSettings
   {
     "name": "projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/projectFeatureSettings",
     "patchAndConfigFeatureSet": "OSCONFIG_C"
   }
   

Replace PROJECT_ID with your project ID. The value OSCONFIG_C represents the full VM Manager feature set.

Disable the OS Config agent

Note: Disable the OS Config agent only when you don't expect to use VM Manager in your Google Cloud project.

Disabling the OS Config agent does not affect the behavior of your VM. You can disable the agent the same way you stop other services of the operating system.

Linux

To disable the agent using systemctl, run the following commands:

sudo systemctl stop google-osconfig-agent
sudo systemctl disable google-osconfig-agent

Windows

To disable the agent using powershell, run the following command:

PowerShell Stop-Service google_osconfig_agent [-StartupType disabled]

Note: The instance/project metadata values won't disable the agent service.

What's next?

• Create an OS policy assignment.
• View operating system details.
• Create patch jobs.
• Learn more about the VM Manager.