How to clone a windows compute engine (GCE) instance from command line using gcutil

clone-win-gce.md

1. gcutil addinstance --image=windows-server-2008-r2-dc-v20140609 --zone=europe-west1-windows --machine_type=n1-standard-1 source-windows

2. Provide a password for the gceadmin account of your Windows instance(s):

3. wait about 10-15 minutes

4. confirm that the instance is completely up: gcutil getserialportoutput source-windows output should end with: ------------------------------------------------------------- Instance setup finished. source-windows is ready to use. -------------------------------------------------------------

5. use RDP to login and customize your instance

6. addsnapshot --source_disk=source-windows snap-windows

7. wait till the addsnapshot opration completes with similar: Table of resources: source-windows | READY Table of operations: +---------------------------------------------------------+--------+-------------------------------+----------------+ | name | status | insert-time | operation-type | +---------------------------------------------------------+--------+-------------------------------+----------------+ | operation-[xxxxx]| DONE | 2014-[xxx] | createSnapshot |

8. Create a new disk from the snapshot gcutil adddisk --source_snapshot=snap-windows --zone=europe-west1-windows win1

9. wait till Table of resources: win1 | europe-west1-windows | READY | 100

10. create the clone instance gcutil addinstance --disk='win1,mode=rw,boot' --zone=europe-west1-windows --machine_type=n1-standard-1 win1

wait another 10-15 minutes till the new instance is up similarly to the first one query gcutil getserialportoutput win1 to verify the state