Change license between LTS and Pro

You can change the license on an existing VM’s disk to switch between Ubuntu LTS and Ubuntu Pro without migrating your applications to new VMs. The VM must be stopped before a license change can be applied to its disk.

If your production environment is based on Ubuntu LTS and you need the premium security, support or compliance features of Ubuntu Pro, you can perform an in-place upgrade of your existing machines:

  1. Stop your machine:

    gcloud compute instances stop $INSTANCE_NAME

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

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

    where

    • $INSTANCE_NAME is the name of the instance 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 22.04 LTS, you need to upgrade to Ubuntu Pro 22.04 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-cloud/global/licenses/ubuntu-1604-lts

    Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

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

    Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

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

    Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

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

    Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

    https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/ubuntu-os-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

    Example – upgrading an Ubuntu 22.04 LTS VM to Ubuntu Pro 22.04 LTS:

    gcloud compute disks update $INSTANCE_NAME --zone=$ZONE \
    --replace-license=projects/ubuntu-os-cloud/global/licenses/ubuntu-2204-lts,projects/ubuntu-os-pro-cloud/global/licenses/ubuntu-pro-2204-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
anbox-cloud      yes       disabled  Scalable Andriod in the cloud
esm-apps         yes       enabled   Expanded Security Maintenance for Applications
esm-infra        yes       enabled   Expanded Security Maintenance for Infrastructure
fips-preview     yes       disabled  Preview of FIPS crypto packages undergoing certification with NIST
fips-updates     yes       disabled  FIPS compliant crypto packages with stable 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.