Moving Google Instances to different Zone - google-cloud-platform

Question

Having issues with a simple instance move in GCE.
Using the following commands in gcloud.
gcloud compute instances move MY-VM \ --zone europe-west1 --destination-zone europe-west2
gcloud compute instances move MY-VM --zone europe-west1-b --destination-zone europe-west2-b
gcloud compute instances move MY-VM \ --destination-zone europe-west2-b
gcloud compute instances move MY-VM \ europe-west1-b --destination-zone europe-west2-b
Gcloud throws the follwing error for above;
ERROR: (gcloud.compute.instances.move) unrecognized arguments:
--zone
europe-west1-b
Google --help documents:
NAME
gcloud compute instances move - move an instance and its attached
persistent disks between zones
SYNOPSIS
gcloud compute instances move INSTANCE_NAME
--destination-zone=DESTINATION_ZONE [--async] [--zone=ZONE]
[GCLOUD_WIDE_FLAG ...]
DESCRIPTION
gcloud compute instances move facilitates moving a Google Compute Engine
virtual machine from one zone to another. Moving a virtual machine may
incur downtime if the guest OS must be shutdown in order to quiesce disk
volumes prior to snapshotting.
For example, running:
$ gcloud compute instances move example-instance-1 \ --zone us-central1-b --destination-zone us-central1-f
will move the instance called example-instance-1 with its all attached
persistent disks, currently running in us-central1-b, to us-central1-f.
is it me or am I losing my mind.

Answer 1

If you want to move the instance within the same region, you can simply type the below command
gcloud compute instances move your_vm --destination-zone=zone_name
Let me know if that helps

Answer 2

String '\ --zone' gets parsed as argument ' --zone' with the leading space. There is no such argument for the command, there is only '--zone' without the leading space. That's why the command doesn't recognize the argument.

Answer 3

Couple of things:
A. Syntax is pretty nuanced here. I was able to duplicate the error you got, and the error doesn't have anything to do with the validity of the zone name.
B. It appears that there is a typo in the example in the help page. Here are variations that worked for me as I moved my VM back and forth between zones. I used my own zones because I didn't want to pay Europe rates:
1: entering everything on one line, with that backslash, just like the docs say (failure):
ingernet#merp:~> gcloud compute instances move MY-VM \ --zone us-west1-b --destination-zone us-west1-a
ERROR: (gcloud.compute.instances.move) unrecognized arguments:
--zone
us-west1-b
2: entering everything on one line, without the backslash (success):
ingernet#merp:~> gcloud compute instances move MY-VM --destination-zone us-west1-a --zone us-west1-b
Moving gce instance MY-VM...done.
3: entering the flags on a separate line (success, regardless of flag sequence):
ingernet#merp:~> gcloud compute instances move MY-VM \
> --zone us-west1-a --destination-zone us-west1-b
Moving gce instance MY-VM...done.
Notice how the 2nd example uses the \ character to escape the return key so that you can wrap your code onto another line in the interest of legibility.
The sequence of the flags doesn't matter, regardless of how many lines the command is entered on:
ingernet#merp:~> gcloud compute instances move MY-VM \
> --destination-zone us-west1-a --zone us-west1-b
Moving gce instance MY-VM...done.
I hope this helps. GCP is rad in a lot of ways but is not without its gotchas.

Answer 4

UPDATE:
The issue was that I was trying to change actual country so that was the issue. Trying to move from Belgium to London and the only way was to create a new instance using the snapshot of the one I wanted to move.
you can only move instances ie;
europe-west1-b to europe-west1-c or west1-a etc
Hope this helps.