Upgrade in-place from LTS to Pro

If your production environment is based on Ubuntu LTS and you need the premium security, support or compliance features of Ubuntu Pro, then you don’t have to migrate your applications to new Ubuntu Pro VMs. You can just perform an in-place upgrade of your existing machines in three simple steps:

  1. Stop your machine:

    gcloud compute instances stop $INSTANCE_NAME

  2. Update the license on the disk to Ubuntu Pro:

    gcloud beta compute disks update $INSTANCE_NAME --zone=$ZONE \
    --replace-licenses=$PREVIOUS_LICENSE_URI,$NEW_LICENSE_URI

    where

    • $INSTANCE_NAME is the name of the instance (boot disk) to replace the license on;

    • $ZONE is the zone containing the instance;

    • $PREVIOUS_LICENSE_URI is the license URI for the non-Pro version on your VM; and

    • $NEW_LICENSE_URI is the license URI for the Pro version that you are upgrading to.

    You can only update to Pro for the same Ubuntu series. If your VM runs Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, you need to upgrade to Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS.

    For $PREVIOUS_LICENSE_URI choose the appropriate URI from:

    Version

    License URI

    Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

    https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/ubuntu-os-pro-cloud/global/licenses/ubuntu-1604-lts

    Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

    https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/ubuntu-os-pro-cloud/global/licenses/ubuntu-1804-lts

    Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

    https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/ubuntu-os-pro-cloud/global/licenses/ubuntu-2004-lts

    Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

    https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/ubuntu-os-pro-cloud/global/licenses/ubuntu-2204-lts

    Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

    https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/ubuntu-os-pro-cloud/global/licenses/ubuntu-2404-lts

    For $NEW_LICENSE_URI choose the appropriate URI from:

    Version

    License URI

    Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS

    https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/ubuntu-os-pro-cloud/global/licenses/ubuntu-pro-1604-lts

    Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS

    https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/ubuntu-os-pro-cloud/global/licenses/ubuntu-pro-1804-lts

    Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS

    https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/ubuntu-os-pro-cloud/global/licenses/ubuntu-pro-2004-lts

    Ubuntu Pro 22.04 LTS

    https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/ubuntu-os-pro-cloud/global/licenses/ubuntu-pro-2204-lts

    Ubuntu Pro 24.04 LTS

    https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/ubuntu-os-pro-cloud/global/licenses/ubuntu-pro-2404-lts

  3. Start the machine:

    gcloud compute instances start $INSTANCE_NAME

  4. SSH into your machine and verify the upgrade by running:

    pro status

    The output should show the different services available and their current status. Something like:

    SERVICE          ENTITLED  STATUS    DESCRIPTION
esm-apps         yes       enabled   Expanded Security Maintenance for Applications
esm-infra        yes       enabled   Expanded Security Maintenance for Infrastructure
fips             yes       disabled  NIST-certified core packages
fips-updates     yes       disabled  NIST-certified core packages with priority security updates
livepatch        yes       enabled   Canonical Livepatch service
usg              yes       disabled  Security compliance and audit tools

For comprehensive instructions, please refer to the official Google Cloud documentation for upgrading to Pro.