Compute Engine: Restore a VM (Instant Restore)

Who can use this feature

Anyone with these permissions: Restore resources

Use instant restore when you need the VM back in service before all its disk data is restored. Instant restore makes the instance available while disks hydrate in the background, serving data on demand until all data is restored.

This article explains how to restore a Google Compute Engine virtual machine (VM) from your Eon snapshots using instant restore. For the standard restore method that fully restores every disk before the instance becomes available, see Compute Engine: Restore a VM.

Restore the instance with instant restore

Before you start

Before you restore a Compute Engine VM with instant restore, make sure:

A restore account has been connected to your Eon account.
The GCP restore project has a VPC and subnet that meet restore server connectivity requirements. By default, Eon uses the default VPC and subnet, but you can customize the restore server connectivity if needed.

Your restore project has restore permissions version 1.7.3 or later. See GCP: Permissions Deployment Files for deployment files.
Your snapshot and source VM meet the requirements in Restore support notes.
The subnet you plan to use for the restored VM is different from the temporary restore server’s subnet. The restored VM runs as a nested VM inside the restore server, which has a separate network interface in each subnet. See GCP: Customize Restore Server Configuration to choose a separate subnet for the restore server. For Google Cloud’s network requirements, see Create VMs with multiple network interfaces.

Find the snapshot you want to restore

In your inventory, select the Compute Engine resource you want to restore. The Resource details panel opens.
Click the Eon snapshots tab. You’ll see a calendar view with colored dots on the days when snapshots were taken. There can be more than one snapshot per day.

When you click a day, a list of Eon snapshots taken that day is displayed below the calendar.
Expand the snapshot you want to restore. Click Instance, and then click Restore. The Restore GCE instance wizard opens.

Choose the restore account

In the Restore GCE instance wizard, you’re taken through a three-step process. The first step is to choose a restore account.

Choose the cloud account you want to restore to, and then click Next.

Turn on instant restore and set the instance details

In the Instance configuration step, you’ll set the instance details.

Turn Use instant restore on.

With instant restore, the instance restores to the same region as your vault, and Region selection isn’t available. The instance starts automatically, so Start instance after restore isn’t displayed.
Set the Machine name.
Choose a Zone to deploy the restored instance to.
Choose the Machine type. With instant restore, the list includes only machine types in the C2, C3, C4, N2, N4, and N4D families. For information on available options, see Machine families resource and comparison guide from Google Cloud.
Choose a VPC Network and Subnetwork for the restored VM. This subnet provides the nested VM’s network identity, so it must be different from the restore server’s subnet.
If you want to retain the labels that were present when the snapshot was taken, turn Keep original labels on. Otherwise, turn Keep original labels off.

In both cases, the new machine is labeled with eon-restore=true. Labels with the eon- prefix aren’t included in the original labels because Eon uses this prefix for internal operations.
To specify an internal IP address, turn Assign internal IP automatically off and enter an Internal IP address within the selected subnet. Otherwise, leave the switch on to assign an available address automatically.
Click Next.

Set details for the attached disks

In this step of the wizard, you’ll set encryption, disk settings, and labels for the disks attached to the instance. Expand individual disks to show disk-specific settings.

Encryption

You can encrypt all disks with the same customer-managed encryption key (CMEK), or you can set each disk’s key separate from the other disks. If you choose to encrypt each disk separately, turn off Encrypt all disks with the same key. Encryption settings are then displayed for each disk.

Disk settings

For each disk, you can keep the original disk settings, or you can customize the drive’s name, type, and size, and, for disk types that support them, IOPS and throughput.

Labels

Each disk has its own labels, independent of the instance-level labels in the previous step. If you want to retain the labels that were present when the snapshot was taken, turn Keep original labels on. Otherwise, turn Keep original labels off.

In both cases, the restored disk is labeled with eon-restore=true. Labels with the eon- prefix aren’t included in the original labels because Eon uses this prefix for internal operations.

Start the restore job

Click Restore to start the asynchronous restore job.

You can monitor the restore job on the Restore jobs tab in the Jobs page.

The job shows Complete when the instance becomes available, while disks continue hydrating in the background.

Once hydration completes, the instance continues running normally. When you reboot or shut down the instance, it’s promoted to the machine type and configuration you specified during restore. The instance keeps its name and internal IP address through this transition. If you shut down the instance, it stays stopped after promotion. If you don’t reboot or shut down the instance within 14 days after hydration completes, it isn’t promoted and keeps running as is.