This post will describe how to export and convert your Google Cloud Compute Engine (GCE) disks to a Vmware Disk (vmdk). Think about if you want run some Cloud workloads in a on-premise environment to lower the costs of your test (DTAP) environment.

Export Compute Engine Disk and convert to VMware (vmdk)

0. Create a Cloud Storage bucket Name: export-gce-disks

gsutil URI gs://export-gce-disks

gs://export-gce-disks https://storage.cloud.google.com/export-gce-disks/

1. Storage Disk Action: Create Image

2. Create an Image Go to Virtual Machine -> Storage -> Disks -> Click on Action -> Create Image

Name: image-chatsupport-disk-image Source: disk Source disk: boot (Disk you want to migrate to convert to image) Loction: Regional Encryption: Google-managed encryption key

CLI

gcloud compute images create image-chatsupport-disk-image
--project=blastcsc-vms --source-disk=boot --source-disk-zone=europe-west4-b --storage-location=europe-west4

3. Export Image to Storage Bucket

Keep in mind that Destination URI should include filename project = should be the projectID

Argument: –export-format vmdk

gcloud compute images export \
    --destination-uri gs://export-gce-disks/disk-image.tar.gz \
    --image image-chatsupport-disk-image \
    --export-format vmdk \
    --project blastcsc-vms

Export failed on: step “export-disk” run error: step “run-export-disk” run error: googleapi: Error 400: Invalid value for field ‘resource.networkInterfaces[0]’: ‘{ “network”: “projects/blastcsc-vms/global/networks/default”, “accessConfig”: [{ “type”: “ONE_T…’. Subnetwork should be specified for custom subnetmode network, invalid

Fix: Create new VPC network Select: Subnet creation mode set to Automatic Assign VPC network Compute Image Instance Repeat from step 2

–subnet=default
–zone=europe-west4-b \

Attempt 2: Add subnet + Zone where the subnet is deployed in. Fixes the problem.

 gcloud compute images export \
    --destination-uri gs://export-gce-disks/disk-image.tar.gz \
    --image image-chatsupport-disk-image \
    --export-format vmdk \
    --subnet=default \
 	--zone=europe-west4-b \
    --project blastcsc-vms

Reference: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/images/export-image#exporting_an_image