Create and manage regional disks

Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability and regional Persistent Disk are storage options that let you implement high availability (HA) services in Compute Engine. Regional Persistent Disk and Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability synchronously replicate data between two zones in the same region and ensure HA for disk data for up to one zonal failure. The regional disk can be a boot disk or a non-boot disk.

You can also allow different instances to concurrently access a Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disk by setting the disk access mode. Regional disks can only be attached to instances in the same zones as the disk's replicas. For more information, see Share a disk between instances.

This document explains how to do the following tasks for regional disks:

Before you begin

  • Review the basics of synchronous disk replication.
  • Read about regional disk failover.
  • If using multi-writer mode for Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disks, review the requirements and limitations in Share disks between instances.
  • 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.

    Terraform

    To use the Terraform samples on this page in a local development environment, install and initialize the gcloud CLI, and then set up Application Default Credentials with your user credentials.

    1. Install the Google Cloud CLI.

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

    3. If you're using a local shell, then create local authentication credentials for your user account: 

      gcloud auth application-default login

      You don't need to do this if you're using Cloud Shell.

      If an authentication error is returned, and you are using an external identity provider (IdP), confirm that you have signed in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.

    For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.

    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.

      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.

Required roles and permissions

To get the permissions that you need to create a regional disk, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles on the project:

For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

These predefined roles contain the permissions required to create a regional disk. To see the exact permissions that are required, expand the Required permissions section:

Required permissions

The following permissions are required to create a regional disk:

  • compute.disks.create
  • compute.instances.attachDisk
  • compute.disks.use
  • Create a snapshot of a disk: compute.disks.createSnapshot
  • Create a regional disk from an image: compute.images.useReadOnly on the image
  • View the details for a disk: compute.disks.get
  • Get a list of disks: compute.disks.list
  • Change the size of a disk: compute.disks.update

You might also be able to get these permissions with custom roles or other predefined roles.

Limitations

  • You can attach regional Persistent Disk only to VMs that use E2, N1, N2, and N2D machine types.
  • You can attach Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability only to supported machine types.
  • You can't create a regional disk by cloning a Hyperdisk ML or Hyperdisk Throughput disk. You must create a snapshot of the source disk and then create a Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disk from the snapshot. For more information, see Change a zonal disk to a Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disk.
  • When using read-only mode, you can attach a regional Balanced Persistent Disk to a maximum of 10 VM instances.
  • The minimum size of a regional Standard Persistent Disk is 200 GiB.
  • You can only increase the size of a regional Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability volume; you can't decrease its size.
  • Regional Persistent Disk and Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability volumes have different performance characteristics than their corresponding zonal disks. For more information, see About Persistent Disk performance and Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability performance limits.
  • You can't use a Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability volume that's in multi-writer mode as a boot disk.
  • If you create a replicated disk by cloning a zonal disk, then the two zonal replicas aren't fully in sync at the time of creation. After creation, you can use the regional disk clone within 3 minutes, on average. However, you might need to wait for tens of minutes before the disk reaches a fully replicated state and the recovery point objective (RPO) is close to zero. Learn how to check if your replicated disk is fully replicated.
  • You can't create regional disks in AI zones.
  • Creating a regional disk from an image has the following limitations:
    • When you create a regional disk from an image, you can create one disk within a project every 5 minutes. You can issue up to 5 requests at once but you can't create more than 5 disks within a 25-minute period.
    • Creating a regional disk from an image is in Preview, and is slower than creating a zonal disk from an image.

About using a regional disk as a boot disk for an instance

You can attach a regional Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disk as a boot disk for stateful workloads that are provisioned ahead of time, before you provision a production workload. Regional boot disks are not intended for hot standbys, because you can't simultaneously attach one boot disk to two instances.

In a high availability setup, if the boot device is a regional disk, Google recommends that you don't pre-create and start the standby instance. Instead, at the failover stage, attach the existing regional disk when you create the standby instance by using the forceAttach option.

You can create a regional boot disk from an image (Preview), a standard snapshot, or an instant snapshot.

To use a regional disk as the boot disk for an instance, use one of the following methods.

  1. Create the instance and the boot disk at the same time.

  2. Create a regional boot disk, and then attach it to an instance:

    1. Create a regional boot disk from an image or snapshot of a disk.
    2. Attach the regional boot disk to an instance.

    We recommend creating regional boot disks from snapshots and not from clones of zonal disks.

To failover a regional boot disk to a running standby instance in the replica zone, use the steps described in Attach a regional boot disk to an instance.

Size limits and reference names for regional disks

The size you specify for a regional disk must be within the ranges listed in following table.

If you create a regional disk with the Google Cloud CLI, REST, or the Cloud Client Libraries for Compute Engine, indicate the disk type to create by providing the value in the Reference name column in the following table.

Disk type Reference name Minimum size Maximum size Default size
Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability hyperdisk-balanced-high-availability 4 GiB 64 TiB 100 GiB
Balanced Persistent Disk pd-balanced Zonal: 10 GiB
Regional: 10 GiB		 64 TiB 100 GiB
Performance (SSD) Persistent Disk pd-ssd Zonal: 10 GiB
Regional: 10 GiB		 64 TiB 100 GiB
Standard Persistent Disk pd-standard Zonal: 10 GiB
Regional: 200 GiB		 64 TiB 500 GiB

Create a regional disk from an image or snapshot

Create a regional Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability volume. The disk must be in the same region as the compute instance that you plan to attach it to.

If you create a Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability volume, you can also allow different instances to concurrently access the disk by setting the disk access mode. For more information, see Share a disk between instances.

For regional Persistent Disk, if you create a disk in the Google Cloud console, the default disk type is pd-balanced. If you create a disk using the gcloud CLI or REST, the default disk type is pd-standard.

Console

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

    Go to Disks

  2. Select the required project.

  3. Click Create disk.

  4. Specify a Name for your disk.

  5. For the Location, choose Regional.

  6. Select the Region and Zone. You must select the same region when you create your instance.

  7. Select the Replica zone in the same region. Make a note of the zones that you select because you must attach the disk to your instance in one of those zones.

  8. Under Disk source type, choose the data source for the disk:

    • To create a blank disk, select Blank disk.
    • To create the disk from an image:
      1. Select Image.
      2. Under Source image, choose the source image for the disk.
    • To create the disk from an existing snapshot:
      1. Select Snapshot, Instant snapshot or Archive snapshot, depending on whether the source snapshot is a standard snapshot, an instant snapshot, or an archive snapshot, respectively.
      2. Under Source snapshot, select the source snapshot or instant snapshot from the list. Only snapshots that are in the location you selected are listed.
    • To create the disk from a specific disk that's within a machine image (Preview):
      1. Select Machine Image.
      2. In the Source machine image drop-down menu, select the machine image you want to use.
      3. In the Source disk drop-down menu, select the device name of the specific disk within the chosen machine image that you want to use as the source for the new disk.
      4. If the selected machine image is protected by a Customer-supplied encryption key (CSEK) (Deprecated), an Encryption section appears. Enter the required decryption key in the provided field.
      5. Configure other disk properties such as Name, Type, Size, and Deletion rule as needed.

  9. Under Disk settings, choose a Disk type and Size. For Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability volumes, you can also change the default Provisioned IOPS, and Provisioned Throughput settings.

  10. Optional: For Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability volumes, you can enable attaching the disk to multiple instances by creating the disk in multi-writer mode. In Access mode, select Multiple VMs read write.

  11. Click Create to finish creating your disk.

gcloud

Create a regional disk by using the compute disks create command.

You can create a blank disk, or you can create the disk from an image (Preview), an instant snapshot, or a standard snapshot.

Blank disk 

gcloud compute disks create DISK_NAME \
 --size=DISK_SIZE \
 --type=DISK_TYPE \
 --region=REGION \
 --replica-zones=ZONE1,ZONE2 \
 --access-mode=DISK_ACCESS_MODE

Replace the following:

  • DISK_NAME: the name of the new disk
  • DISK_SIZE: the size, in GiB, of the new disk. Must be within the size limits for the disk type.
  • DISK_TYPE: For regional Persistent Disk, this is the type of the regional disk. The default value is pd-standard. For Hyperdisk, specify the value hyperdisk-balanced-high-availability.
  • REGION: the region for the regional disk to reside in, for example: europe-west1
  • ZONE1,ZONE2: the zones within the region where the two disk replicas are located, for example: europe-west1-b,europe-west1-c
  • DISK_ACCESS_MODE: optional: For Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disks, specify how instances can access the data on the disk. The following values are supported:
    • READ_WRITE_SINGLE, for read-write access from one instance. This is the default.
    • READ_WRITE_MANY, for read-write access from multiple instances.

Snapshot

To create the disk from a standard or archive snapshot, use the --source-snapshot flag to specify the name of the snapshot.

gcloud compute disks create DISK_NAME \
  --size=DISK_SIZE \
  --type=DISK_TYPE \
  --region=REGION \
  --replica-zones=ZONE1,ZONE2 \
  --access-mode=DISK_ACCESS_MODE \
  --source-snapshot=SNAPSHOT_NAME \
  [ --source-snapshot-region=SOURCE_REGION ]

Replace the following:

  • DISK_NAME: the name of the new disk
  • DISK_SIZE: the size, in GiB, of the new disk. Must be within the size limits for the disk type.
  • DISK_TYPE: For regional Persistent Disk, this is the type of the regional disk. The default value is pd-standard. For Hyperdisk, specify the value hyperdisk-balanced-high-availability.
  • REGION: the region for the regional disk to reside in, for example: europe-west1
  • ZONE1,ZONE2: the zones within the region where the two disk replicas are located, for example: europe-west1-b,europe-west1-c
  • DISK_ACCESS_MODE: optional: For Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disks, specify how instances can access the data on the disk. The following values are supported:
    • READ_WRITE_SINGLE, for read-write access from one instance. This is the default.
    • READ_WRITE_MANY, for read-write access from multiple instances.
  • SNAPSHOT_NAME with the name of the snapshot.
  • SOURCE_REGION: optional. If the snapshot is a regionally scoped snapshot, specify the region that the snapshot is scoped to.

To create the disk from an instant snapshot, use the --source-instant-snapshot flag to specify the name of the instant snapshot.

 gcloud compute disks create DISK_NAME \
    --source-instant-snapshot=INSTANT_SNAPSHOT_NAME

Replace INSTANT_SNAPSHOT_NAME with the name of the instant snapshot.

Image

To create the disk from a specific version of a public image or from a custom image, use the beta version of the command. Specify the name of the image with --image flag:

 gcloud beta compute disks create DISK_NAME \
    --size=DISK_SIZE \
    --type=DISK_TYPE \
    --region=REGION \
    --replica-zones=ZONE1,ZONE2 \
    --access-mode=DISK_ACCESS_MODE \
    --image=IMAGE_NAME

Replace the following:

  • DISK_NAME: the name of the new disk
  • DISK_SIZE: the size, in GiB, of the new disk. Must be within the size limits for the disk type.
  • DISK_TYPE: For regional Persistent Disk, this is the type of the regional disk. The default value is pd-standard. For Hyperdisk, specify the value hyperdisk-balanced-high-availability.
  • REGION: the region for the regional disk to reside in, for example: europe-west1
  • ZONE1,ZONE2: the zones within the region where the two disk replicas are located, for example: europe-west1-b,europe-west1-c
  • DISK_ACCESS_MODE: optional: For Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disks, specify how instances can access the data on the disk. The following values are supported:
    • READ_WRITE_SINGLE, for read-write access from one instance. This is the default.
    • READ_WRITE_MANY, for read-write access from multiple instances.
  • IMAGE_NAME with the name of the image, for example: debian-13-trixie-v20260902.

To create the disk using the latest version of an image family, use the beta version of the command. Specify the image family name with the --image-family flag:

 gcloud beta compute disks create DISK_NAME \
    --size=DISK_SIZE \
    --type=DISK_TYPE  --region=REGION \
    --replica-zones=ZONE1,ZONE2 \
    --image-family=IMAGE_FAMILY_NAME

Replace IMAGE_FAMILY_NAME with the name of the image family, for example, debian-13.

Terraform

To create a regional Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability volume, use the google_compute_region_disk resource.

To specify the type of the disk, set the type argument to the corresponding value from the following list.

  • Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability: hyperdisk-balanced-high-availability
  • SSD Persistent Disk: pd-ssd
  • Balanced Persistent Disk: pd-balanced
  • Standard Persistent Disk: pd-standard

To create a disk from an image (Preview), replace the snapshot argument in the following example with the image argument.

The following example creates a regional disk from a snapshot.

resource "google_compute_region_disk" "regiondisk" {
  name                      = "region-disk-name"
  snapshot                  = google_compute_snapshot.snapdisk.id
  type                      = "pd-ssd"
  region                    = "us-central1"
  physical_block_size_bytes = 4096
  size                      = 11

  replica_zones = ["us-central1-a", "us-central1-f"]
}

To learn how to apply or remove a Terraform configuration, see Basic Terraform commands.

REST

To create a regional Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability volume, construct a POST request to the compute.regionDisks.insert method.

You can create a blank disk, or you can create the disk from an image (Preview) or a standard or instant snapshot.

Blank disk

To create a blank disk, construct a POST request with the following request body:

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION/disks
{
 
   "name": "DISK_NAME",
   "region": "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION",
   "replicaZones": [
   "projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE1",
   "projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE2"
   ],
   "sizeGb": "DISK_SIZE",
   "type": "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION/diskTypes/DISK_TYPE",
   "accessMode": "DISK_ACCESS_MODE"
}

Replace the following:

  • PROJECT_ID: your project ID
  • REGION: the region for the regional disk to reside in, for example: europe-west1
  • DISK_NAME: the name of the new disk
  • ZONE1,ZONE2: the zones where replicas of the new disk should be located
  • DISK_SIZE: the size, in GiB, of the new disk. Must be within the size limits for the disk type.
  • DISK_TYPE: For regional Persistent Disk, this is the type of Persistent Disk. For Hyperdisk, specify the value hyperdisk-balanced-high-availability
  • DISK_ACCESS_MODE: Optional: for Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disks, specify how instances can access the data on the Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disk. The following values are supported:
    • READ_WRITE_SINGLE, for read-write access from one instance. This is the default.
    • READ_WRITE_MANY, for read-write access from multiple instances.

Snapshot

To create the disk from a standard or archive snapshot, use the sourceSnapshot field to specify the URL of the snapshot.

  • If the snapshot is a global snapshot:

    POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/ REGION/disks
{

   "name": "DISK_NAME",
   "region": "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION",
   "replicaZones": [
   "projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE1",
   "projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE2"
   ],
   "sizeGb": "DISK_SIZE",
   "type": "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION/diskTypes/DISK_TYPE",
   "accessMode": "DISK_ACCESS_MODE",
"sourceSnapshot": "SNAPSHOT_NAME"
}

    Replace the following:

    • PROJECT_ID: your project ID
    • REGION: the region for the regional disk to reside in, for example: europe-west1
    • DISK_NAME: the name of the new disk
    • ZONE1,ZONE2: the zones where replicas of the new disk should be located
    • DISK_SIZE: the size, in GiB, of the new disk. Must be within the size limits for the disk type.
    • DISK_TYPE: For regional Persistent Disk, this is the type of Persistent Disk. For Hyperdisk, specify the value hyperdisk-balanced-high-availability
    • DISK_ACCESS_MODE: Optional: for Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disks, specify how instances can access the data on the Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disk. The following values are supported:
      • READ_WRITE_SINGLE, for read-write access from one instance. This is the default.
      • READ_WRITE_MANY, for read-write access from multiple instances.
    • SNAPSHOT_NAME: the name of the standard or archive snapshot.

  • If the snapshot is a regionally scoped snapshot (Preview), then use the beta version of the endpoint:

    POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION/disks
{
  "name": "DISK_NAME",
  "sourceSnapshot": "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/SOURCE_REGION/snapshots/SNAPSHOT_NAME"
}

    Replace the following:

    • REGION: the region for the regional disk to reside in, for example: europe-west1
    • SOURCE_REGION: the region that the source snapshot is scoped to
    • SNAPSHOT_NAME: the source snapshot for the disk

To create the disk from an instant snapshot, use the sourceInstantSnapshot field instead of sourceSnapshot to specify the URL of the instant snapshot.

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/ PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION/disks
{
 "name": "DISK_NAME",
 "sourceInstantSnapshot": "projects/PROJECT/regions/SOURCE_REGION/instantSnapshots/ SOURCE_INSTANT_SNAPSHOT_NAME"
}

Replace SOURCE_INSTANT_SNAPSHOT_NAME with the name of the instant snapshot.

Image

To create the disk from a custom or public image, use the beta version of the endpoint and specify the URL of the image with the sourceImage field.

  • To use a custom image or the latest version of a custom image family:

    POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION/disks
{

   "name": "DISK_NAME",
   "region": "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION",
   "replicaZones": [
   "projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE1",
   "projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE2"
   ],
   "sizeGb": "DISK_SIZE",
   "type": "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION/diskTypes/DISK_TYPE",
   "accessMode": "DISK_ACCESS_MODE",
"sourceImage": "global/images/IMAGE_NAME_OR_PATH"
}

    Replace the following:

    • PROJECT_ID: your project ID
    • REGION: the region for the regional disk to reside in, for example: europe-west1
    • DISK_NAME: the name of the new disk
    • ZONE1,ZONE2: the zones where replicas of the new disk should be located
    • DISK_SIZE: the size, in GiB, of the new disk. Must be within the size limits for the disk type.
    • DISK_TYPE: For regional Persistent Disk, this is the type of Persistent Disk. For Hyperdisk, specify the value hyperdisk-balanced-high-availability
    • DISK_ACCESS_MODE: Optional: for Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disks, specify how instances can access the data on the Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disk. The following values are supported:
      • READ_WRITE_SINGLE, for read-write access from one instance. This is the default.
      • READ_WRITE_MANY, for read-write access from multiple instances.
    • IMAGE_NAME_OR_PATH: To use a specific image, replace the IMAGE_NAME_OR_PATH with the name of the image, for example: custom-debug-image. To use an image from an image family, specify family/IMAGE_FAMILY_NAME, where IMAGE_FAMILY_NAME is the name of the image family. For example, family/debug-image-family.

  • To use a specific public image or the latest version of a public image family:

    POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION/disks
{
"name": "DISK_NAME",
"sourceImage": "projects/IMAGE_PROJECT/global/images/IMAGE_NAME_OR_PATH"
}

    Replace the following:

    • IMAGE_PROJECT: the project that contains the public image. For example, to use a Debian image, specify debian-cloud.
    • IMAGE_NAME_OR_PATH: the name or path to the image. To use a specific version of an image, specify the image name, for example: debian-13-trixie-v20260902. To use the latest version of a public OS image, specify the image family name, for example: family/debian-13.

After you create the disk, you can use it as a boot disk for an instance or attach it as a data disk to an instance.

Attach a regional disk to your instance

For disks that are not boot disks, after you create a regional Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability volume, you can attach it to an instance. The instance must be in the same region as the disk.

To attach a regional boot disk to an instance, see Attach a regional boot disk to an instance.

To attach a Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disk to multiple instances, repeat the procedure in this section for each instance. You can attach Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disks only in read-write mode.

Console

  1. To attach a disk to an instance, go to the VM instances page.

    Go to VM instances

  2. In the Name column, click the name of the instance.

  3. Click Edit .

  4. Click +Attach existing disk.

  5. Choose the previously created regional disk to add to your instance.

  6. If you see a warning that indicates the selected disk is already attached to another instance, select the Force-attach disk box to force-attach the disk to the instance that you are editing.

    Review the use cases for force-attaching regional disks at Regional disk failover.

  7. Optional: If attaching a Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disk to multiple instances, for Disk attachment mode, select Read/write.

  8. Click Save.

  9. On the Edit VM page, click Save.

gcloud

To attach a regional disk to a running or stopped instance, use the compute instances attach-disk command with the --disk-scope flag set to regional.

If attaching a Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disk in multi-writer mode to multiple instances, the only supported attachment mode is rw, which is the default access mode. You don't need to include the --mode flag.

gcloud compute instances attach-disk INSTANCE_NAME \
    --disk=DISK_NAME \
    --disk-scope=regional \
    --device-name=DEVICE_NAME

Replace the following:

  • INSTANCE_NAME: the name of the instance to which you're adding the regional disk
  • DISK_NAME: the name of the new disk that you're attaching to the instance
  • DEVICE_NAME: Optional: a name that the guest OS uses to create a symlink, which helps identify the disk at the OS level.

Terraform

To attach a regional Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability volume to an instance, you can use the google_compute_attached_disk resource.

resource "google_compute_instance" "test_node" {
  name         = "test-node"
  machine_type = "f1-micro"
  zone         = "us-west1-a"

  boot_disk {
    initialize_params {
      image = "debian-cloud/debian-11"
    }
  }
  attached_disk {
    source      = google_compute_disk.default.id
    device_name = google_compute_disk.default.name
  }

  network_interface {
    network = "default"
    access_config {
      # Ephemeral IP
    }
  }

  # Ignore changes for persistent disk attachments
  lifecycle {
    ignore_changes = [attached_disk]
  }


}

To learn how to apply or remove a Terraform configuration, see Basic Terraform commands.

REST

To attach a regional disk to a running or stopped instance, construct a POST request to the compute.instances.attachDisk method and include the URL to the regional disk that you created.

If attaching a Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disk in multi-writer mode to multiple instances, the only supported attachment mode is READ-WRITE, which is the default access mode. You don't need to include the mode property.

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/instances/INSTANCE_NAME/attachDisk
 {
  "source": "/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION/disks/DISK_NAME",
  "deviceName": DEVICE_NAME
 }

Replace the following:

  • PROJECT_ID: your project ID
  • ZONE: the location of your instance
  • INSTANCE_NAME: the name of the instance to which you're adding the new regional disk
  • REGION: the region where the regional disk is located
  • DISK_NAME: the name of the regional disk (as shown in the Google Cloud console).
  • DEVICE_NAME: Optional: a name that the guest OS uses to create a symlink, which helps identify the disk at the OS level.

For non-boot disks, after you create and attach a blank regional disk to a instance, you must format and mount the disk, so that the operating system can use the available storage space.

Change a zonal disk to a regional disk

To convert an existing zonal disk of the following types to a regional disk, Create a regional disk by cloning the source disk.

  • Hyperdisk Balanced
  • Hyperdisk Extreme
  • Balanced Persistent Disk
  • SSD Persistent Disk
  • Standard Persistent Disk

To convert a Hyperdisk ML or Hyperdisk Throughput volume to a regional disk, create a new Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disk from a snapshot of the existing disk, as described in Change a zonal disk to a Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disk.

Create an instance with a new regional boot disk

When setting up a highly available compute instance, you can create the primary instance with a new regional boot disk. When you create an instance at the same time as its regional boot disk, you can create the boot disk from an image (Preview) or a standard snapshot.

To create a new regional disk from an existing zonal disk instead, you must first Change the zonal disk to a regional disk, and then create the instance with the new regional disk.

This section describes how to create an instance with a new, regional, boot disk using the Google Cloud console, Google Cloud CLI, or REST.

Console

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

    Go to Create an instance

    If prompted, select your project and click Continue.

    The Create an instance page appears and displays the Machine configuration pane.

  2. In the Machine configuration pane, do the following:

    1. In the Name field, specify a name for your instance. For more information, see Resource naming convention.

    2. Optional: In the Zone field, select a zone for this instance.

      The default selection is Any. If you don't change this default selection, then Google automatically chooses a zone for you based on machine type and availability.

    3. Select a machine family for your instance from one of the following options:

      • General purpose
      • Compute optimized
      • Memory optimized
      • Storage optimized
      • Network optimized
      • GPUs
      • TPUs

      The Google Cloud console then displays the machine series that are available for your selected machine family.

    4. In the Series column, select the machine series for your instance.

      If you selected GPUs as the machine family in the previous step, then select the GPU type that you want. The machine series is then automatically selected for the selected GPU type.

    5. In the Machine type section, select the machine type for your instance.

  3. In the navigation menu, click OS and storage. In the Operating system and storage pane that appears, complete the following steps.

    To learn more about the parameters that you can configure while adding new disks, see About Persistent Disk and About Google Cloud Hyperdisk.

    1. To start configuring your boot disk, click Change. The Boot disk pane appears and displays the Public images tab.

    2. Configure the data source for the boot disk in one of the following ways:

      • To choose a public image as the data source for your boot disk, in the Public images tab, specify the following:
        1. In the Operating system list, select the OS type.
        2. In the Version list, select the OS version.
        3. In the Boot disk type list, select the type of the boot disk.
        4. In the Size (GB) field, specify the size of the boot disk.
      • To choose a custom image as the data source for your boot disk, click Custom images and then, in the Custom images tab that appears, specify the following:
        1. To select the image project, click Change, and then select the project that contains the image.
        2. In the Image list, select the image that you want to import.
        3. In the Boot disk type list, select the type of the boot disk.
        4. In the Size (GB) field, specify the size of the boot disk.
      • To choose a standard snapshot as the data source for your boot disk, click Snapshots and then, in the Snapshots tab that appears, specify the following:
        1. In the Snapshot list, select the snapshot.
        2. In the Boot disk type list, select the type of the boot disk.
        3. In the Size (GB) field, specify the size of the boot disk.
      • To choose an archive snapshot as the data source for your boot disk, click Archive snapshots and then, in the Archive snapshots tab that appears, specify the following:
        1. In the Archive snapshot list, select the archive snapshot.
        2. In the Boot disk type list, select the type of the boot disk.
        3. In the Size (GB) field, specify the size of the boot disk.
      • To choose an existing disk as your boot disk, click Existing disks. Then, in the Existing disks tab that appears, select an existing disk in the Disk list. This option uses the existing disk as the boot disk and doesn't create a new disk.

    3. Optional: For advanced configuration options, expand the Show advanced configurations section.

    4. To confirm your boot disk options and return to the Operating system and storage pane, click Select.

    5. Optional: To learn how to attach non-boot disks to your instance, see Create an instance with additional non-boot disks.

  4. If you did not choose an existing boot disk, configure it to be a regional disk by doing the following:

    1. In the navigation menu, click Data protection. In the Data protection pane that appears, do the following:

      1. To configure all new disks for the instance to use synchronous disk replication (regional Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability), select the Regional disks checkbox.

      2. (No action required by default.) Clear the Exclude boot disks checkbox.

  5. Optional: Specify other configuration options. For more information, see Configuration options during instance creation.

  6. To create and start the instance, click Create.

gcloud

Use the gcloud compute instances create command to create an instance, and the --create-disk flag to specify the regional disk. When specifying the disk parameters, the characters ^:^ specify that the separation character between parameters is a colon (:). This lets you use a comma (,) when specifying the replica-zones parameter.

  • To create an instance and create its regional boot disk from a public image or a custom image (Preview):

    gcloud compute instances create PRIMARY_INSTANCE_NAME \
--zone=ZONE --project=PROJECT_ID \
--create-disk=^:^name=REGIONAL_DISK_NAME:boot=true:type=DISK_TYPE:replica-zones=ZONE,REMOTE_ZONE:[IMAGE_NAME_OR_FAMILY]

    Replace the following:

    • PRIMARY_INSTANCE_NAME: a name for the instance
    • ZONE: the name of the zone in which to create the instance
    • PROJECT_ID: the name of the project in which to create the instance
    • REGIONAL_DISK_NAME: a name for the regional disk
    • DISK_TYPE: the type of disk to create, for example, hyperdisk-balanced-high-availability. If using a Persistent Disk, then you must also specify scope=regional within the --create-disk flag to create a Regional Persistent Disk.
    • REMOTE_ZONE: the alternate zone for the regional disk

    • IMAGE_NAME_OR_FAMILY: the name or family of the image to use.

    • To use a specific version of a public or custom image, specify image=<var>IMAGE_NAME</var>, where <var>IMAGE_NAME</var> is the image name. For example, image=debian-13-trixie-v20260902 or image=my-custom-image.

    • To use an image family, specify image-family=<var>IMAGE_FAMILY</var>:image-family-scope=global. This creates the instance that uses the most recent, non-deprecated OS image in the image family.

      For example, to use the latest version of the OS image in the Debian 13 image family, specify image-family=debian-13:image-family-scope=global.

  • To create an instance and create a regional boot disk from a snapshot:

    gcloud compute instances create PRIMARY_INSTANCE_NAME \
--zone=ZONE --project=PROJECT_ID \
--create-disk=^:^name=REGIONAL_DISK_NAME:boot=true:type=DISK_TYPE:source-snapshot=SNAPSHOT_NAME:replica-zones=ZONE,REMOTE_ZONE

    Use the same parameters as the previous command, and replace <var>SNAPSHOT_NAME</var> with the name of the snapshot for the boot disk, for example, dev-snapshot-may2026.

REST

Create a POST request to the instances.insert method and specify the properties boot: 'true' and replicaZones. To create the instance from a snapshot, specify the sourceSnapshot property. To create the instance from an image, specify the sourceImage property.

  • To create an instance and create its regional boot disk from a snapshot:
POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/instances
{
 "name": "INSTANCE_NAME",
 "disks": [{
    "boot": true,
    "initializeParams": {
       "sourceSnapshot": "global/snapshots/BOOT_SNAPSHOT_NAME",
       "replicaZones": [
           "projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE",
           "projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/REMOTE_ZONE"
       ],
       "diskType": "projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/diskTypes/DISK_TYPE"
    }
  }],
 "networkInterfaces": [
    {
      "network": "global/networks/default"
    }
  ]
}

Replace the following:

  • PROJECT_ID: your project ID
  • ZONE: the name of the zone where you want to create the instance
  • INSTANCE_NAME: a name for the instance
  • BOOT_SNAPSHOT_NAME: the name of the boot disk snapshot
  • REMOTE_ZONE: the remote zone for the regional disk

  • DISK_TYPE: the type of disk to create, for example, hyperdisk-balanced-high-availability or pd-balanced

  • To create an instance and create its regional boot disk from an image (Preview):

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/instances
{
 "name": "INSTANCE_NAME",
 "disks": [{
    "boot": true,
    "initializeParams": {
       "sourceImage": "projects/IMAGE_PROJECT/global/images/IMAGE_NAME",
       "replicaZones": [
           "projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE",
           "projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/REMOTE_ZONE"
       ],
       "diskType": "projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/diskTypes/DISK_TYPE"
    }
  }],
 "networkInterfaces": [
    {
      "network": "global/networks/default"
    }
  ]
}

Create a new instance with additional regional disks

When creating an instance, you can optionally include regional Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability volumes as additional disks.

To create and attach a regional Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability volume to an instance during instance creation, see either of the following:

Attach a regional boot disk to an instance

Use the following steps to:

  • Replace the boot disk of an existing instance with a regional boot disk.
  • Failover a regional boot disk to a hot standby instance that is running in the backup zone. You do this by attaching the regional disk to the instance as the boot disk.

These steps assume that the regional disk and instance already exist.

gcloud

  1. Stop the instance. 
    gcloud compute instances stop INSTANCE_NAME  --zone=ZONE
  2. Detach the current boot disk from the instance. 
    gcloud compute instances detach-disk INSTANCE_NAME \
 --zone=ZONE --disk=CURRENT_BOOT_DEVICE_NAME
  3. Attach the regional boot disk to the instance. 
    gcloud compute instances attach-disk INSTANCE_NAME  \
 --zone=ZONE  \
 --disk=REGIONAL_DISK_NAME  \
 --disk-scope=regional --force-attach \
 --boot

  4. Restart the instance. 

    gcloud compute instances start INSTANCE_NAME

Replace the variables in the previous commands with the following:

  • INSTANCE_NAME: the name of the instance to which you want to attach the regional boot disk
  • ZONE: the zone in which the instance is located
  • CURRENT_BOOT_DEVICE_NAME: the name of the boot disk being used by the instance. This is usually the same as the name of the instance.
  • REGIONAL_DISK_NAME: the name of the regional disk that you want to attach to the instance as a boot disk

Optional: If you can't successfully detach the regional boot disk from the primary instance due to an outage or failure, include the flag --force-attach.

REST

  1. Stop the instance.

    POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/instances/INSTANCE_NAME/stop

  2. Detach the current boot disk from the instance.

    POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/instances/INSTANCE_NAME/detachDisk?deviceName=CURRENT_BOOT_DEVICE_NAME

  3. Attach the regional boot disk to the instance.

    Construct a POST request to the compute.instances.attachDisk method, and include the URL to the regional boot disk:

    POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/instances/INSTANCE_NAME/attachDisk
{
"source": "compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION/disks/REGIONAL_DISK_NAME",
"boot": true
}

  4. Restart the instance.

    POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/instances/INSTANCE_NAME/start

Replace the variables in the previous commands with the following:

  • PROJECT_ID: your project ID
  • INSTANCE_NAME: the name of the instance to which you want to attach the regional disk
  • ZONE: the zone in which the instance is located
  • CURRENT_BOOT_DEVICE_NAME: the name of the boot disk being used by the instance. This is usually the same as the name of the instance.
  • REGION: the region in which the regional disk is located
  • REGIONAL_DISK_NAME: the name of the regional disk that you want to attach to the instance as a boot disk

Optional: If you can't successfully detach the regional boot disk from the instance that it was originally attached to because of an outage or failure, include "forceAttach": true in the request body.

List and describe your regional disks

You can view a list of all your configured regional disks, and information about their properties, including the following:

  • Disk ID
  • Disk name
  • Size
  • Disk type
  • Region
  • Zonal replicas

To view detailed information about your regional disks, use the following:

Resize a regional disk

If instances with regional disks require additional storage space, you can resize the disks. You can resize disks at any time, regardless of whether the disk is attached to a running instance. If you need to separate your data into unique volumes, create multiple secondary disks for the instance. For Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability you can also increase the IOPS and throughput limits for the disk.

The command for resizing a regional disk is very similar to that for resizing a zonal disk. However, you must specify a region instead of a zone for the disk location.

You can only increase, and not decrease, the size of a disk. To decrease the disk size, you must create a new disk with a smaller size. Until you delete the original, larger disk, you are charged for both disks.

For instructions on how to modify a regional disk, see the following:

What's next