Replace a boot disk

This document explains how to replace a virtual machine (VM) boot disk in Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) air-gapped. To create a boot disk before your replacement, see Create a boot disk.

You can detach boot disks from your VM instance and attach new boot disks. To repair boot disks, you can mount them to another VM instance without deleting the original one. You can also replace a VM boot disk without recreating an entirely new VM instance.

This document is for developers in platform administrator or application operator groups that create and configure boot disks for VMs. For more information, see Audiences for GDC air-gapped documentation.

Before you begin

To use gdcloud command-line interface (CLI) commands, ensure that you have downloaded, installed, and configured the gdcloud CLI. All commands for Distributed Cloud use the gdcloud or kubectl CLI, and require an operating system (OS) environment.

Get the kubeconfig file path

To run commands against the Management API server, ensure you have the following resources:

  1. Sign in and generate the kubeconfig file for the Management API server if you don't have one.

  2. Use the path to the kubeconfig file of the Management API server to replace MANAGEMENT_API_SERVER in these instructions.

Request IAM roles

Contact your Project IAM Admin to request the following roles on your project:

  • Project VirtualMachine Admin (project-vm-admin): create, modify, list, and delete standard and high-performance VMs in the project namespace.

All VM roles must bind to the namespace of the project where the VM resides. Follow the steps to verify your access.

Restrictions

You have the following restrictions when replacing a boot disk:

  • Attach or detach a boot disk only from a stopped VM instance.
  • Attach only one boot disk for each VM instance.
  • Attach only existing boot disks to a VM instance.
  • Replace the boot disk only with a new bootable disk.

Replace a boot disk

Replace a boot disk by using the GDC console or the kubectl CLI.

Console

  1. In the navigation menu, click Virtual Machines > Instances.

  2. In the list of VMs, click a VM name to view its details.

  3. Click Replace boot disk.

  4. In the confirmation dialog, click Stop to stop the VM.

  5. Wait a few minutes for the VM to stop.

  6. Click Refresh.

  7. When the VM is in a stopped state, click Replace boot disk again.

  8. In the Replace boot disk dialog, choose a new boot disk or an existing boot disk.

    • To provision a new boot disk, click the New boot disk tab.

      1. In the Disk name field, enter a new disk name that is unique to the project.
      2. In the Size field, enter a disk size between 12 and 65536 GiB.
      3. In the Image name list, select an image.
      4. In the Deletion rule section, click Keep disk or Delete disk.
      5. In the Storage profile section, choose a profile. The default profile is Standard.

    • To choose an existing boot disk, click the Existing boot disk tab.

      1. In the Disk list, select a disk.
      2. In the Deletion rule section, click Keep disk or Delete disk.

  9. Click Save.

  10. Restart the VM.

kubectl

  1. Stop the VM instance.

  2. Open the current spec.disks value to change it for the new virtual machine disk:

    kubectl --kubeconfig MANAGEMENT_API_SERVER \
  -n PROJECT \
  edit virtualmachines.virtualmachine.gdc.goog VM_NAME

    Replace the following values:

    • MANAGEMENT_API_SERVER with the path to the kubeconfig file of the Management API server.
    • PROJECT with the Distributed Cloud project where you want to replace the boot disk.
    • VM_NAME with the name of the virtual machine.

  3. Modify the boot disk in the config file by replacing VM_BOOT_DISK_NAME with the new VM boot disk name:

    disks:
- virtualMachineDiskRef:
    name: VM_BOOT_DISK_NAME
  boot: true

    The result must look like the following example:

    disks:
- virtualMachineDiskRef:
    name: NEW_VM_BOOT_DISK_NAME
  boot: true

  4. Restart the VM.

What's next