Google Compute Engine: what is the difference between disk snapshot and disk image?

Question

I\'ve been using both for my startup and to me, the functionality is the same. Until now, the instances I\'ve been creating are only for computation. I\'m wondering how GCE dis

Answer 1

Snapshot is a copy of your disk that you can use to create a new persistence disk (PD) of any type (standard PD or SSD PD). You can use the snapshot to create a bigger disk size, also you have the ability of creating the new disk on any zone you might need. Pricing is a bit cheaper for the provisioned space used for a snapshot. when used as backup, you can create differential snapshots.

When you use an existing disk to create an instance, you have to create the instance in the same zone where the disk exists and it will have the size of the disk.

When referring to images resources, is the pre-configured GCE operating system that you’re running (Centos, Debian, etc) and you can use the public images, available for all projects or private images for a specific project or create your own custom image.