This document describes how to collect information about a virtual machine (VM)instance by using a diagnostic tool. Use the information that the tools collectsto help with basic troubleshooting before contactingSupport.

The tool does the following:

• Collects information only from the VM that you specify.

• Stores the information only in your project.

• Stores the information for 10 days in aCloud Storagebucket, which, by default, only you can access.

Before sharing the collected information with Google Support, do the following:

1. Review the information for confidential or personally identifiableinformation (PII).

2. Delete or mask the information as necessary.

Diagnostic information collected from the VM

This diagnostic tool collects information about the following:

• Disks:

  • Windows Management Instrumentation(WMI) object information aboutdisks,partitions, andvolumes

• Events:

  • Windows Events, including application events and system events

• Networks:

  • WMI object information about firewall rules, and output fromipconfig,netstat,nslookup,ping,route, andtracert

• Programs:

  • WMI object information aboutprocesses,scheduled tasks,services, andGoogle Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

• System:

  • WMI object information aboutusers, Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) settings by usingthis script, and output frombcdedit,driverquery,msinfo32,pnputil, andsysteminfo, andmemory dump logs

For detailed information about how Compute Engine collects thisinformation, see thepublic repository.

Limitations

• You can only collect diagnostic information from VMs created based on WindowsServer.

Before you begin

• Compute Engine installs the diagnostic tool by default on public versions of Windows Server images later thanv20190714. Otherwise, if your Windows Server image version is earlier thanv20190714, or you are using a custom image, install the tool by using thegooget install google-compute-engine-diagnostics command.
• If you haven't already, set upauthentication. Authentication verifies your identity for access to Google Cloud services and APIs. To run code or samples from a local development environment, you can authenticate to Compute Engine by selecting one of the following options:

  Select the tab for how you plan to use the samples on this page:

  Console

  When you use the Google Cloud console to access Google Cloud services and APIs, you don't need to set up authentication.

  gcloud

  1. Install the Google Cloud CLI. After installation,initialize the Google Cloud CLI by running the following command:

     gcloudinit

     If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.

     Note: If you installed the gcloud CLI previously, make sure you have the latest version by runninggcloud components update.
  2. Set a default region and zone.

  REST

  To use the REST API samples on this page in a local development environment, you use the credentials you provide to the gcloud CLI.

  Install the Google Cloud CLI. After installation,initialize the Google Cloud CLI by running the following command:

  gcloudinit

  If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.

  Note: If you installed the gcloud CLI previously, make sure you have the latest version by runninggcloud components update.

  For more information, seeAuthenticate for using REST in the Google Cloud authentication documentation.

Collecting diagnostic information from a VM

Run the diagnostic tool either directly from the VM, or remotely, by using theGoogle Cloud CLI. On Windows-based VMs, find the diagnostic tool in theC:\Program Files\Google\Compute Engine\diagnostics directory.

Permissions required for this task

To perform this task, you must have the followingpermissions:

• roles/iam.serviceAccountTokenCreator on the project

What's next

• Learn how tocapture screenshots from VMs.

• Learn how toTroubleshoot Windowsinstances.

• Learn how toTroubleshoot RDP.