Approved Virtual Machine Image in Use

01 Sign in to Google Cloud Management Console.

02 Select the GCP project that you want to access from the console top navigation bar.

03 Navigate to Google Compute Engine dashboard at https://console.cloud.google.com/compute.

04 In the navigation panel, select VM instances to access all the virtual machine (VM) instances provisioned for the selected project.

05 Click on the name of the instance that you want to re-create using the approved machine image (see Audit section to identify the right resource).

06 Select the Details tab and collect all the necessary configuration details and metadata available for selected VM instance.

07 In the navigation panel, select Machine images to access the list with all the machine images available for the selected project.

08 Choose the approved (golden) machine image created for the selected GCP project, then click on the 3-dot button available in the Actions column and select Create instance to initiate the VM instance launch process.

09 On the Create an instance page, perform the following actions:

1. Provide a unique name for the new virtual machine instance in the Name box.
2. Make sure that all the instance settings are configured based on the information taken at step no. 6.
3. Click Create to launch your new, approved virtual machine instance.

10 Migrate the necessary application data from the source (non-approved) virtual machine instance to the destination (approved) VM instance.

11 To avoid extra charges on your Google Cloud bill, you can remove the source (non-approved) instance from your GCP project. To remove the required instance, perform the following:

1. In the navigation panel, select VM instances.
2. Choose the VM instance that you want to remove, then click the 3-dot button for instance menu options and select Delete to initiate the removal process.
3. Within the Delete an instance confirmation box, select DELETE to confirm the action and remove the selected instance from your project.

12 Repeat steps no. 5 – 11 to re-create other virtual machine instances with the approved application stack, available in the selected GCP project.

13 Repeat steps no. 2 – 12 for each GCP project created within your Google Cloud account.

01 Run compute instances create command (Windows/macOS/Linux) using the name of the approved (golden) machine image as value for the --source-machine-image parameter, to create a new virtual machine (VM) instance with the approved application stack, in the appropriate Google Cloud zone (location):

gcloud beta compute instances create cc-frontend-golden-instance
    --zone us-central1-a
    --source-machine-image cc-project5-golden-image

02 The command output should return the metadata available for the new, approved VM instance:

Created [https://www.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/cc-web-stack-project-123123/zones/us-central1-a/instances/cc-frontend-golden-instance].

NAME                         ZONE           MACHINE_TYPE   INTERNAL_IP  STATUS
cc-frontend-golden-instance  us-central1-a  n1-standard-8  10.128.0.45  RUNNING

03 Migrate the necessary application data from the source (non-approved) virtual machine instance to the destination (approved) VM instance.

04 To avoid extra charges on your Google Cloud bill, you can remove the source (non-approved) instance from your GCP project. To delete the required instance, run compute instances delete command (Windows/macOS/Linux) using the name of the instance that you want to delete as identifier parameter, to remove the selected VM resource from your project:

gcloud compute instances delete cc-frontend-vm-instance
    --zone us-central1-a

05 Press Y at the command prompt to confirm the Google Cloud resource removal:

The following instances will be deleted. Any attached disks configured to be auto-deleted will be deleted unless they are attached to any other instances or the `--keep-disks` flag is given and specifies them for keeping. Deleting a disk is irreversible and any data on the disk will be lost.
 - [cc-frontend-vm-instance] in [us-central1-a]
Do you want to continue (Y/n)?

06 The command output should return the URL of the deleted virtual machine (VM) instance:

Deleted [https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/cc-web-stack-project-123123/zones/us-central1-a/instances/cc-frontend-vm-instance].

07 Repeat steps no. 1 – 6 to re-create other virtual machine instances with the approved application stack, available in the selected GCP project.

08 Repeat steps no. 1 – 7 for each GCP project deployed within your Google Cloud account.