gcloud compute instances describe INSTANCE_NAME [--zone=ZONE] [GCLOUD_WIDE_FLAG …]
gcloud compute instances describe displays all data associated with
a Compute Engine virtual machine instance.
It's possible to limit the the scope of the description by using the '--format'
flag. For details, see Filtering
and formatting fun with gcloud.
test-instance, run:
gcloud compute instances describe test-instanceTo output only a set of fields from the available information, specify it using the '--format' flag:
gcloud compute instances describe test-instance --format="yaml(name,status,disks)"INSTANCE_NAME--zone=ZONEgcloud attempts to identify the
appropriate zone by searching for resources in your currently active project. If
the zone cannot be determined, gcloud prompts you for a selection with
all available Google Cloud Platform zones.
To avoid prompting when this flag is omitted, the user can set the
property:
compute/zone
gcloud config set compute/zone ZONEA list of zones can be fetched by running:
gcloud compute zones listTo unset the property, run:
gcloud config unset compute/zoneCLOUDSDK_COMPUTE_ZONE.
--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.
gcloud alpha compute instances describegcloud beta compute instances describegcloud preview compute instances describe
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Last updated 2026-05-27 UTC.