The gce_export
tool streams a local disk to a Google Compute Engine image
file in a Google Cloud Storage bucket (steps 9 and 10 in the
image export documentation).
When exporting to GCS, no local file is created so no additional disk space needs to be allocated.
Once complete the image file can be imported in GCE as described in the
image import documentation.
This tool can also be used to export the image to local disk.
Download and install Go. Then pull and
install the gce_export
tool, this should place the binary in the
Go bin directory:
go get github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/compute-image-tools/cli_tools/gce_export
-disk
disk to export, on linux this would be something like/dev/sdb
, and on Windows\\.\PhysicalDrive1
-buffer_prefix
if set will use this local path as the local buffer prefix, on linux this would be something like/my_folder
, and on Windows\\.\PhysicalDrive2\path
.-gcs_path
GCS path to upload the image to, in the form of gs://my-bucket/image.tar.gz-oauth
path to oauth json file for authenticating to the GCS bucket-licenses
(optional) comma separated list of licenses to add to the image-y
skip confirmation prompt
While you can export a disk with currently mounted partitions, or even the disk
containing the current root partition it is recommended to unmount all partitions
prior to running gce_export
.
This will stream /dev/sdb
to the GCS path gs://some-bucket/linux.tar.gz
gce_export -disk /dev/sdb -gcs_path gs://some-bucket/linux.tar.gz
This will stream /dev/sdb
to the local path /my_folder/linux.tar.gz
gce_export -disk /dev/sdb -local_path /my_folder/linux.tar.gz
This will stream \\.\PhysicalDrive1
to the GCS path
gs://some-bucket/path/windows.tar.gz
gce_export.exe -disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 -gcs_path gs://some-bucket/windows.tar.gz
This will stream \\.\PhysicalDrive1
to the local path
\\.\PhysicalDrive2\path\windows.tar.gz
gce_export.exe -disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 -local_path \\.\PhysicalDrive2\path\windows.tar.gz