Zonal extension policies let you manage extensions in a single zone within a project. Each policy specifies extensions that you need to install and a scope, such as VMs in a specific zone or VMs with particular labels.
The following diagram illustrates how you can use zonal extension policies to apply to VMs based on zones and labels:
As shown in the preceding diagram, you can define zonal extension policies at
the project level. These policies apply to VMs in a specific zone that match the
selection criteria. For example, in Zone A, extension policy E1
targets VMs
with the label env=prod
to install Extension for SAP, and in Zone B, extension
policy E4
targets VMs with no labels to install Extension for Compute Workload
and Ops Agent.
The guest agent on each VM periodically communicates with Google Cloud to check for applicable policies. If a VM is targeted by a policy, VM Extension Manager installs the specified extensions and keeps it up-to-date according to the policy. If no extensions are installed on a VM, the guest agent checks for policy updates every eight minutes. If there are extensions installed, it checks every minute.
What's next
To learn more about managing extensions, see the following resources:
