CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-compute-engine
Hemanth Kumar
Hemanth Kumar

Reputation: 3762

Can we use cron job to start the Compute engine at particular time?

Need a crop job script to start or stop the Compute Engine virtual machines at particular time.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 36

Answers (1)

Abdellatif Derbel
Abdellatif Derbel

Reputation: 689

You can use instance schedule: you create a resource policy detailing the start and stop behavior, and then attach the policy to one or more VM instances.

Example with terraform:

resource "google_compute_resource_policy" "start_stop" {
  name        = "start-stop-policy"
  description = "Start Stop instances"
  instance_schedule_policy {
    vm_start_schedule {
      schedule = "10 8 * * 1-5"
    }
    vm_stop_schedule {
      schedule = "30 18 * * *"
    }
    time_zone = "Europe/Paris"
  }
}

# attach resource_policy to instance
resource "google_compute_instance" "my_instance" {
   ...
   resource_policies = [google_compute_resource_policy.start_stop.self_link]
   ...
}

This solution is totally free and simple.

If you want another solution you can see this documentation: https://cloud.google.com/scheduler/docs/start-and-stop-compute-engine-instances-on-a-schedule, so you will create:

  • Cloud Scheduler jobs to make calls on a set schedule to start and stop the instance
  • Pub/Sub messages sent and received for each start and stop event.
  • Cloud Run functions to start and stop the instance we want to schedule.

Upvotes: 1

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