Shutting off Compute engine VMs with Scheduler

Question

In our GCP project we have a few VMs in Compute engine for some testing purposes. Collogues often forget them running after work. Is it possible to schedule a cron job with Cloud Scheduler, that turns off the machines at a certain hour every day or should I use some other GCP service for that?

I went to the VM settings but couldn't find such options. Is it possible that startup/shutdown options are available only at creation time?

Answer 1

As mentioned in this blog written by Vishal Bulbule, you can schedule your VM restarts by following the below steps:

• Go to compute Engine page.

• Click the Instance schedules tab at the top of the page

• Click Create schedule. The Create a schedule pane opens.

• Enter a Name. Optional: Enter a Description.

• In the Region drop-down menu, select the location for this instance schedule.

• Define when the instance schedule starts and stops any attached VM instances.

• If you need VM instances to start or stop at a specific time, schedule the operation 15 minutes earlier than needed. Make sure each start and stop operation are at least 15 minutes apart.

• Enter a Start time, a Stop time, or both in 24 hr format or use cron expression.

• Optional: In the Initiate date field, type or click date_range to select the date and time when you want this instance schedule to begin. If omitted, the schedule is effective immediately.

• Optional: In the End date field, type or click date_range to select the date and time when you want this instance schedule to end. If omitted, the schedule is effective indefinitely.

• Click Submit. Click on the name of the instance schedule that you want to attach. The Instance schedule details page opens.

• Click Add instances to schedule.

• The Add instances to schedule pane opens. Select the checkbox for each VM instance that you want to attach this schedule to Instance.

• Click Add.

If you want to have additional features you can use some third party tools as mentioned in the blog.

Note: The steps given above are taken from the blog which has been embedded in the content above