Method: targetInstances.get

Returns the specified TargetInstance resource.

HTTP request

GET https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/{project}/zones/{zone}/targetInstances/{targetInstance}

The URL usesgRPC Transcoding syntax. To know more about valid error responses that can be thrown by this HTTP request, please refer to theservice error catalog

Path parameters

Parameters
project

string

Project ID for this request.

zone

string

Name of the zone scoping this request.

targetInstance

string

Name of the TargetInstance resource to return.

Request body

The request body must be empty.

Response body

Represents a Target Instance resource.

You can use a target instance to handle traffic for one or more forwarding rules, which is ideal for forwarding protocol traffic that is managed by a single source. For example, ESP, AH, TCP, or UDP. For more information, readTarget instances.

If successful, the response body contains data with the following structure:

JSON representation
{"kind":string,"id":string,"creationTimestamp":string,"name":string,"description":string,"zone":string,"natPolicy":enum,"instance":string,"selfLink":string,"network":string,"securityPolicy":string}
Fields
kind

string

[Output Only] The type of the resource. Alwayscompute#targetInstance for target instances.

id

string (uint64 format)

[Output Only] The unique identifier for the resource. This identifier is defined by the server.

creationTimestamp

string

[Output Only] Creation timestamp inRFC3339 text format.

name

string

Name of the resource. Provided by the client when the resource is created. The name must be 1-63 characters long, and comply withRFC1035. Specifically, the name must be 1-63 characters long and match the regular expression[a-z]([-a-z0-9]*[a-z0-9])? which means the first character must be a lowercase letter, and all following characters must be a dash, lowercase letter, or digit, except the last character, which cannot be a dash.

description

string

An optional description of this resource. Provide this property when you create the resource.

zone

string

[Output Only] URL of the zone where the target instance resides. You must specify this field as part of the HTTP request URL. It is not settable as a field in the request body.

natPolicy

enum

Must have a value ofNO_NAT. Protocol forwarding delivers packets while preserving the destination IP address of the forwarding rule referencing the target instance.

instance

string

A URL to the virtual machine instance that handles traffic for this target instance. When creating a target instance, you can provide the fully-qualified URL or a valid partial URL to the desired virtual machine. For example, the following are all valid URLs:

selfLink

string

[Output Only] Server-defined URL for the resource.

network

string

The URL of the network this target instance uses to forward traffic. If not specified, the traffic will be forwarded to the network that the default network interface belongs to.

securityPolicy

string

[Output Only] The resource URL for the security policy associated with this target instance.

Authorization scopes

Requires one of the following OAuth scopes:

  • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/compute.readonly
  • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/compute
  • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform

For more information, see theAuthentication Overview.

IAM Permissions

In addition to any permissions specified on the fields above, authorization requires one or more of the followingIAM permissions:

  • compute.targetInstances.get

To find predefined roles that contain those permissions, seeCompute Engine IAM Roles.

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Last updated 2025-09-18 UTC.