Shielded VMs

[bduncan]

I have limited knowledge of Shielded VMs and have been unable to find an answer to my question in other resources.  If I create an GCE instance using a Shielded VMs and in 2-3 months Google releases an updated version of the Shielded VM; is there a way to update the existing instance or would I need to create a new GCE instance that using the updated version?

Anyone know how frequently the the Shielded VMs are updated?

Hope this makes sense.

Thanks,

[alexmoore]

The best guide is here: https://cloud.google.com/compute/shielded-vm/docs/shielded-vm

A Shielded VM is a security wrapper around a VM to verify the integrity of the VM OS at a boot/kernel level.  However the VM itself is handled like any standard Compute Engine image, either provided by Google, you can see a list of which images support Shielded VM here: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/images/os-details#security-features

Or you can create your own, with instructions on how to prepare an image here: https://cloud.google.com/compute/shielded-vm/docs/creating-shielded-images

Updating these images would be exactly the same as any normal update process for the VM, either by updating it during its life - perhaps via the vendor standard update process or by using OS patch management features of VM Manager: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/os-patch-management 

Or by re-provisioning the VM from a fresh image.

Hope that helps.  Any other questions let me know.