Google (gcloud) Compute Engine Snapshot

Overview

• Hats off to https://github.com/jacksegal for creating this script initially
• Takes a daily snapshot of a compute instance disk without any user input
• Pass in the instance name
• Deletes all snapshots that are older than 7 days (default)

Prerequisites

• Instance to be snapshot'd needs to be accessible on the network to the server doing the snapshot

• The VM must have the sufficient gcloud permissions, including "compute" set to "enabled":

  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31905966/gcloud-compute-list-networks-error-some-requests-did-not-succeed-insufficie#31928399

Recommended Setup

• Load the script on to the VM (do not run it from a remote source)

• I use cronic - http://habilis.net/cronic/

• Run the script from a cron job. Note this must be done as a user that has access to gcloud compute:

    0 05 * * * /usr/local/bin/cronic /path/to/snapshot.sh [INSTANCE_NAME] | tee /path/to/snapshot.log
  

• Add the /var/log/cron directory folder to logrotate: /etc/logrotate.d/cron

  /var/log/cron/*.log { daily missingok rotate 14 compress notifempty create 640 root adm sharedscripts }

Downloading the script and opening in Windows?

If you download the script and open it on a Windows machine, that may add windows character's to the file: jacksegal#1.