How do I take a screenshot of a Google Cloud VM?

Curious about what’s happening on your Google Cloud VM? Take a screenshot!

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) introduces a new feature: screenshots . This is very useful while troubleshooting when a VM is unresponsive, stuck on a blue screen, or waiting for input.

It supports both Windows and Linux, and the good news is that you can capture screenshots on demand through the GCP console or API.

Note : Screenshots are different from snapshots, which we discussed earlier.

When you log in to Google Cloud and navigate to your VM instance, you’ll see the Screenshots tab.

As you can see in the image above, it is not enabled by default. However, it takes less than a minute to enable this feature.

Let’s see how.

The VM must be in a stopped state. If not, please do so.

• Navigate to your VM instance and click Edit.
• Scroll down to Display Devices and select “Turn on display devices”.

• Save your settings and start the VM.

Let’s take a look at what the CentOS screenshot looks like.

And for Windows.

Imagine how useful this would be if your server dies during startup, patching, or hardware failure and you can’t log in. I think this is very helpful.