How to export disk images of virtual machines Compute Cloud

Task descriptionTask description

You need to upload an image of one or more VM disks to the local storage.

SolutionSolution

Disk images or snapshots of Compute Cloud instances can only be used within Yandex Cloud.
It is impossible to download it to your computer directly from the Management Console interface or using the YC CLI tools.

You can use third-party software or standard OS tools to create an image or backup copy of your disk.
For example, run the dd utility on the temporary Linux instance with an attached copy of the target disk, and then download resulting image to your local computer.
To do this, follow these steps:

1. Stop the VM with the disk you want to copy. You can do this in the management console or by the command in the YC CLI:

   yc compute instance stop <instance_name>
   

2. Create the VM disk image that you want to copy following these instructions.

3. Create a temporary Linux-based VM. You will run a disk image copy operation on it.

4. While creating a VM, connect an additional disk to it.
   Then specify the previously created image as disk contents.

5. Connect to the created temporary VM via SSH.

6. Attach an additional disk, which you want to copy, to the temporary instance, following these instructions.

7. Create a new SSH session and copy the additional disk to the local machine with the command:

   ssh <username>@<ip_address> "sudo dd if=/dev/sdb status=progress | gzip -c" > sda.img.gz
   

   In a result, your disk image will be saved to a directory on the local machine from where the SSH session was started.

If you need to transfer a disk image within Yandex Cloud, you can provide public access to the disk image.
To do this, assign the role compute.images.user to the system group allAuthenticatedUsers. The role compute.images.user does not grant the authority to delete or modify your images.