gcloud compute instances export

NAME

gcloud compute instances export - export a Compute Engine virtual machine instance's configuration to a file

SYNOPSIS

gcloud compute instances export (INSTANCE : --zone=ZONE) [--destination=DESTINATION] [GCLOUD_WIDE_FLAG …]

DESCRIPTION

Export a Compute Engine virtual machine instance's configuration to a file.

EXAMPLES

A virtual machine can be exported by running:

gcloud compute instances export my-instance --destination=<path-to-file>

POSITIONAL ARGUMENTS

Instance resource - Name of the instance to export. For details on valid instance names, refer to the criteria documented under the field 'name' at: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/reference/rest/v1/instances The arguments in this group can be used to specify the attributes of this resource. (NOTE) Some attributes are not given arguments in this group but can be set in other ways.

To set the project attribute:

provide the argument instance on the command line with a fully specified name;
provide the argument --project on the command line;
set the property core/project.

This must be specified.

INSTANCE

ID of the instance or fully qualified identifier for the instance.

To set the instance attribute:

provide the argument instance on the command line.

This positional argument must be specified if any of the other arguments in this group are specified.

--zone=ZONE

The name of the Google Compute Engine zone. To set the zone attribute:

provide the argument instance on the command line with a fully specified name;
provide the argument --zone on the command line;
set the property compute/zone.

FLAGS

--destination=DESTINATION: Path to a YAML file where the configuration will be exported. The exported data will not contain any output-only fields. Alternatively, you may omit this flag to write to standard output. For a schema describing the export/import format, see $CLOUDSDKROOT/lib/googlecloudsdk/schemas/…

GCLOUD WIDE FLAGS

These flags are available to all commands: --access-token-file, --account, --billing-project, --configuration, --flags-file, --flatten, --format, --help, --impersonate-service-account, --log-http, --project, --quiet, --trace-token, --user-output-enabled, --verbosity.

Run $ gcloud help for details.

API REFERENCE

This command uses the compute/v1 API. The full documentation for this API can be found at: https://cloud.google.com/compute/

NOTES

These variants are also available:

gcloud alpha compute instances export

gcloud beta compute instances export

gcloud preview compute instances export

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Last updated 2026-05-27 UTC.