🛡️ Google GCE Instance is located in a less cost-effective region🟢

• Contextual name: 🛡️ GCE Instance is located in a less cost-effective region🟢
• ID: /ce/ca/google/compute-engine/instance-cost-effective-region
• Tags:
  • 🟢 Policy with categories
  • 🟢 Policy with type
  • 🟢 Production policy
• Policy Type: BEST_PRACTICE
• Policy Categories: COST

Logic

• 🧠 prod.logic.yaml🟢
  • 📗 Google GCE Instance
  • 🔌 Google GCE Instance - object.extracts.yaml
  • 🧪 test-data.json

Description

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Description

This policy identifies Google GCE Instances that are provisioned in Google regions known to have higher pricing compared to nearby alternatives.

Rationale

Cloud service costs vary across regions due to differences in infrastructure expenses, energy pricing, and regional market conditions. For workloads without strict geographic or latency requirements, deploying instances in more cost-efficient regions within the same continent can deliver significant cost savings without adversely affecting performance.

Impact

Migrating workloads to different regions requires careful planning to avoid service disruptions and to ensure latency, compliance, and data sovereignty requirements continue to be met.

Audit

This policy flagged an Google GCE Instance as INCOMPLIANT if it is running in one of the following regions identified as less cost-efficient:

Region	Recommended Alternative

... see more

Remediation

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Remediation

Prerequisites

• Ensure you have sufficient quotas in the destination region (disk, snapshot, VM quotas).
• Verify that persistent disks attached to the VM are not currently mounted elsewhere.
• Consider local SSDs or ephemeral storage: data on local SSDs will not survive termination, so replicate or back up any needed data.
• If the VM has GPUs, ensure equivalent GPU types are available in the target region/zone.
• If moving across regions, you may need to choose a new subnetwork in the target region (cross-region VMs cannot keep existing subnetworks).
• Recognize that internal/external IPs may change. Intra-region moves preserve external IPs; cross-region moves require new external IPs.

Migrate a Google GCE Instance

1. Identify Disks Associated with the Instance

gcloud compute instances describe {{instance-name}} \
  --zone {{old-zone}} \
  --format="list(name,status,disks)"

2. Disable Auto-Delete on Disks

Prevent the disks from being deleted when the VM is removed:

gcloud compute instances set-disk-auto-delete {{instance-name}} \

... [see more](remediation.md)

policy.yaml

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Linked Framework Sections

Section	Sub Sections	Internal Rules	Policies	Flags	Compliance
💼 Cloudaware Framework → 💼 Resource Optimization			24		no data