Change Compute Engine machine instance type when part of a load balanced instance group

Question

What is the best way to change the instance type of a machine that is part of a load balanced instance group? I'd like to avoid losing the machine name and data if possible.

For a non load balanced instance, I see that you can change the instance once it is stopped. But I cannot stop the machine when it is part of a load balancer.

I have set up my instance group as following:

autoscaling: off
number of instances: 1
autohealing: no health check

I've tried to stop it by * going to the compute instance and clicking stop on top. But it restarts right away. * by changing the number of instances to 0, but then it deletes the current instance.

Load Balance Details Incoming requests are directed to a single server, on port 80. I have maximum CPU utilization set to 100 and balancing mode is set to Utilization.

Can you add more details about how you've set up your load balancing, and how you've attempted to stop the load-balanced instance? Using a naive TCP L4 load-balancing setup, I have no problem stopping the instance, editing the machine-type, then restarting the instance through the developer console. — Kevin

Faizan Faizan · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-23T17:18:49

One workaround to avoid loosing data would be to create an image from your current disk and than create a new template with this image selecting your desired machine type. Once done, update your group with this new template and recreate the instance in the group using gcloud compute instance-groups managed recreate-instances.

Change Compute Engine machine instance type when part of a load balanced instance group

1 Answers