Managing Instances¶

The Instances tab is vmup's home screen: a live table of every compute instance in your project, with one-key actions for the full VM lifecycle.

The instance list¶

Instances are listed with their name, project, zone, machine type, and status (RUNNING, STOPPED, and transitional states). Running VMs also show how many active tunnels they have. A detail pane below the table shows the selected VM's image, port mappings, and boot disk size.

vmup - 1.6.2 - GCP Instance Manager

 1 Instances 2 Data Disks                              refreshed 3:04:05 PM

  VM Name        Project          Zone            Machine         Status
  ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
> rstudio-demo   my-gcp-project   us-central1-a   e2-highmem-2    RUNNING (1 tunnel)
  analysis-vm    my-gcp-project   us-central1-a   e2-highmem-4    STOPPED
  batch-runner   my-gcp-project   us-central1-a   e2-standard-4   PROVISIONING
  ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

  Image:         my-rstudio-image
  Port Mapping:  8787:8787
  Username:      demo
  Boot Disk:     20 GB
  Data Disks:    reference-data (100 GB, ro)
  Tunnel active: http://localhost:8787 (PID 52114)

  ↑/↓/←/→ navigate • : command • / filter • r refresh • ? help

Navigate with Up/Down (or J/K)
R refreshes the list from GCP
On narrow terminals the table collapses into a card layout automatically

Filtering¶

Press / to filter the list. Two styles are supported:

Free text — matches anywhere: rstudio
Property search — status:running, zone:us-central1-a, machine:e2-highmem-2, name:analysis

/ status:running▎

tab next • enter apply • esc cancel

After applying, the help bar shows the active filter and match count — filter: status running (1/3) • / edit • esc clear. The filter is remembered per tab, so switching to Data Disks and back keeps your filter.

Lifecycle actions¶

All actions work on the selected instance, either by direct key or through the command palette (:):

Key	Action	What happens
`N`	New instance	Opens the launch form (walkthrough)
`E`	Edit	Reopens the form for an existing VM — change machine type, ports, disk size, then re-apply
`I`	Info	Detailed view of the VM's configuration
`S`	Start	Starts a stopped VM and re-establishes its SSH tunnels
`C`	Connect	Interactive SSH session via IAP (running VMs only)
`X`	Stop	Closes tunnels, and optionally stops the VM to save costs
`Shift`+`X`	Stop all	Stops every VM and all tunnels
`Shift`+`D`	Destroy	Runs `terraform destroy` and removes all the VM's infrastructure
`P`	Progress	Re-opens the streaming log of the current or last operation

Destroying an instance¶

Destroying is a two-step confirmation: confirm the prompt, then type the VM's name exactly. vmup runs terraform destroy, tearing down the VM, its VPC, NAT, and firewall rules, then deletes the local state directory under ~/.vmup/projects/<vm-name>/.

Boot disk contents are deleted

Destroy removes the boot disk and everything on it. Keep anything you care about on a persistent data disk — those survive a VM destroy.

Editing an instance¶

Press E to edit a VM's configuration. vmup reopens the launch form pre-filled with the current values; on submit it re-runs terraform apply to reconcile the changes. Changing the machine type requires the VM to restart.