Create a customized boot disk

Before you begin

To use gdcloud command-line interface (CLI) commands, ensure that you have downloaded, installed, and configured the gdcloud CLI. All commands for Distributed Cloud use the gdcloud or kubectl CLI, and require an operating system (OS) environment.

Get the kubeconfig file path

To run commands against the org admin cluster, ensure you have the following resources:

Locate the org admin cluster name, or ask your Platform Administrator (PA) what the cluster name is.
Sign in and generate the kubeconfig file for the org admin cluster if you don't have one.
Use the path to the kubeconfig file of the org admin cluster to replace ORG_ADMIN_KUBECONFIG in these instructions.

Request permissions and access

To perform the tasks listed in this page, you must have the Project VirtualMachine Admin role. Follow the steps to verify that you have the Project VirtualMachine Admin (project-vm-admin) role in the namespace of the project where the VM resides.

For VM operations using the GDC console or the gdcloud CLI, request your Project IAM Admin to assign you both the Project VirtualMachine Admin role and the Project Viewer (project-viewer) role.

Create a boot disk

When you create a virtual machine (VM) instance, you must also create a boot disk for the VM. You can use either a public image or a custom image.

GDC automatically creates a boot persistent disk when you create a VM instance. If you require additional data storage disks for your instances, add a persistent disk to your VM.

Use the procedures described on this page to create boot disks that you can use later to create VMs.

Create a boot disk from an image

You can create a standalone boot persistent disk outside of instance creation and attach it to an instance afterwards. This section shows how to create a boot disk from either a GDC-provided OS image or a custom OS image.

Create a boot disk from a GDC-provided image

Before you create a boot disk by using a GDC-provided image, review the list of available images. Then create a boot disk with the provided image.

gdcloud

List all available images and their minimum disk size:
```
gdcloud compute images list
```
This command includes both Distributed Cloud-provided and custom images. Choose either one in the vm-system namespace.

Select a Distributed Cloud-provided image to create the VM disk:

gdcloud compute disks create BOOT_DISK_NAME \
    --project=PROJECT \
    --size=DISK_SIZE \
    --image=IMAGE_NAME \
    --image-project=vm-system

Replace the variables using the following definitions:

Variable	Definition
`BOOT_DISK_NAME`	The name of the boot disk.
`PROJECT`	The GDC project in which to create the boot disk.
`DISK_SIZE`	The size of the boot disk, needs to be at least the `minimumDiskSize` of the image.
`IMAGE_NAME`	The name of the image.

kubectl

List all available GDC-provided images:

kubectl --kubeconfig ORG_ADMIN_KUBECONFIG \
    get virtualmachineimages.virtualmachine.gdc.goog --namespace vm-system

Get the minimumDiskSize of a specific GDC-provided image. The size of the created customized boot disk must be at least the minimumDiskSize:

kubectl --kubeconfig ORG_ADMIN_KUBECONFIG \
  get virtualmachineimages.virtualmachine.gdc.goog --namespace vm-system \
  IMAGE_NAME -ojsonpath='{.spec.minimumDiskSize}'

Create a VirtualMachineDisk object:

kubectl --kubeconfig ORG_ADMIN_KUBECONFIG apply -n PROJECT -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: virtualmachine.gdc.goog/v1
kind: VirtualMachineDisk
metadata:
  name: BOOT_DISK_NAME
spec:
  source:
    image:
      name: IMAGE_NAME
      namespace: vm-system
  size: DISK_SIZE
EOF

Replace the variables using the following definitions,

Variable	Definition
`ADMIN_KUBECONFIG`	The admin cluster `kubeconfig` file path.
`IMAGE_NAME`	The name of the image.
`PROJECT`	The GDC project in which to create the boot disk.
`BOOT_DISK_NAME`	The name of the boot disk.
`DISK_SIZE`	The size of the boot disk, needs to be at least the `minimumDiskSize` of the image.

Create a boot disk from a custom image

A custom image belongs exclusively to your project. To create a VM with a custom image, you must first create a custom image in the same project if you don't already have one.

Set up the necessary IAM roles to access custom images in your project if you haven't done so yet. Then proceed with these instructions.

gdcloud

List all custom images and their minimum disk size:

gdcloud compute images list \
    --project=PROJECT \

Select a custom image to create the VM disk:

gdcloud compute disks create BOOT_DISK_NAME \
    --project=PROJECT \
    --size=DISK_SIZE \
    --image=IMAGE_NAME \
    --image-project=PROJECT

Replace the variables using the following definitions:

Variable	Definition
`BOOT_DISK_NAME`	The name of the boot disk.
`PROJECT`	The GDC project in which to create the boot disk.
`DISK_SIZE`	The size of the boot disk, needs to be at least the `minimumDiskSize` of the image.
`IMAGE_NAME`	The name of the image.

API

List all custom images:

kubectl --kubeconfig ORG_ADMIN_KUBECONFIG \
    get virtualmachineimages.virtualmachine.gdc.goog --namespace PROJECT

Get the minimumDiskSize of a specific customized image. The size of the created customized boot disk must be at least the minimumDiskSize:

kubectl --kubeconfig ORG_ADMIN_KUBECONFIG \
  get virtualmachineimages.virtualmachine.gdc.goog --namespace vm-system \
  IMAGE_NAME -ojsonpath='{.spec.minimumDiskSize}'

Create a VirtualMachineDisk object:

kubectl --kubeconfig ORG_ADMIN_KUBECONFIG \
    apply --namespace PROJECT -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: virtualmachine.gdc.goog/v1
kind: VirtualMachineDisk
metadata:
  name: BOOT_DISK_NAME
spec:
  source:
    image:
      name: IMAGE_NAME
      namespace: PROJECT
  size: DISK_SIZE
EOF

Replace the variables, using the following definitions:

Variable	Definition
`ADMIN_KUBECONFIG`	The admin cluster `kubeconfig` file path.
`IMAGE_NAME`	The name of the image chosen from the list all custom images command.
`PROJECT`	The GDC project in which to create the boot disk.
`BOOT_DISK_NAME`	The name of the boot disk.
`DISK_SIZE`	The size of the boot disk, needs to be at least the `minimumDiskSize` of the image.

To replace a boot disk, see the Replace a boot disk page.