NAME
    gcloud compute instances describe - describe a virtual machine instance

SYNOPSIS
    gcloud compute instances describe INSTANCE_NAME [--zone=ZONE]
        [GCLOUD_WIDE_FLAG ...]

DESCRIPTION
    gcloud compute instances describe displays all data associated with a
    Compute Engine virtual machine instance.

    It's possible to limit the the scope of the description by using the
    '--format' flag. For details, see Filtering and formatting fun with gcloud
    (https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/filtering-and-formatting-fun-with).

EXAMPLES
    To describe an instance named test-instance, run:

        $ gcloud compute instances describe test-instance

    To output only a set of fields from the available information, specify it
    using the '--format' flag:

        $ gcloud compute instances describe test-instance \
            --format="yaml(name,status,disks)"

POSITIONAL ARGUMENTS
     INSTANCE_NAME
        Name of the instance to describe. For details on valid instance names,
        refer to the criteria documented under the field 'name' at:
        https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/reference/rest/v1/instances

FLAGS
     --zone=ZONE
        Zone of the instance to describe. If not specified, you might be
        prompted to select a zone (interactive mode only). gcloud attempts to
        identify the appropriate zone by searching for resources in your
        currently active project. If the zone cannot be determined, gcloud
        prompts you for a selection with all available Google Cloud Platform
        zones.

        To avoid prompting when this flag is omitted, the user can set the
        compute/zone property:

            $ gcloud config set compute/zone ZONE

        A list of zones can be fetched by running:

            $ gcloud compute zones list

        To unset the property, run:

            $ gcloud config unset compute/zone

        Alternatively, the zone can be stored in the environment variable
        CLOUDSDK_COMPUTE_ZONE.

GCLOUD WIDE FLAGS
    These flags are available to all commands: --access-token-file, --account,
    --billing-project, --configuration, --flags-file, --flatten, --format,
    --help, --impersonate-service-account, --log-http, --project, --quiet,
    --trace-token, --user-output-enabled, --verbosity.

    Run $ gcloud help for details.

NOTES
    These variants are also available:

        $ gcloud alpha compute instances describe

        $ gcloud beta compute instances describe