[HN Gopher] Google Cloud announces VM Manager: Operate large Com...
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       Google Cloud announces VM Manager: Operate large Compute Engine
       fleets with ease
        
       Author : alexrustic
       Score  : 84 points
       Date   : 2021-01-28 17:27 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (cloud.google.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (cloud.google.com)
        
       | XorNot wrote:
       | My only question is if this is getting an AWS-like key-value
       | store tied into their KMS offering? The big value of AWS System
       | Manager was actually just having a secure key-value store tied
       | into AWS IAM auth.
        
         | zachberger wrote:
         | Like the GCP Secrets Manager?
         | 
         | https://cloud.google.com/secret-manager
        
       | ransom1538 wrote:
       | I just get some random hard to debug crash. Is this production
       | ready?
       | 
       | [root@docker-test-image-1 ~]# sudo systemctl status google-
       | osconfig-agent
       | 
       | ...
       | 
       | Started Google OSConfig Agent. Jan 28 20:25:22 docker-test-
       | image-1 OSConfigAgent[25491]: 2021-01-28T20:25:22.8732Z
       | OSConfigAgent Info: OSConfig Agent (versi> Jan 28 20:25:26
       | docker-test-image-1 OSConfigAgent[25491]:
       | 2021-01-28T20:25:26.2589Z OSConfigAgent Error inventory.go:57:
       | pack> Jan 28 20:35:33 docker-test-image-1 OSConfigAgent[25491]:
       | 2021-01-28T20:35:33.3380Z OSConfigAgent Error inventory.go:57:
       | pack>
        
       | WaxProlix wrote:
       | A lot like AWS Systems Manager, it seems.
        
       | kristianpaul wrote:
       | AWS took years to launch Cloud Shell, and now Google is catching
       | up with System Manager equivalent. Fair cloud!
        
         | Twirrim wrote:
         | I wouldn't be hugely surprised to find out there's a Gartner
         | points requirement for such features.
         | 
         | Underneath that magic quadrant graph that Gartner publish each
         | year is a scoring system, x and y features are worth 1 point, w
         | and z features are worth 3 points, etc. etc. Typically that's
         | based on what other clouds are already doing, but in some
         | places they attempt to push features that way based on what
         | their market research indicates customers want.
         | 
         | Clouds know what they'll be evaluated on about a year before
         | they're evaluated, so they know what features they need to
         | build during the year. Evaluation time is coming up for clouds,
         | so you should expect to see a bunch of features announced over
         | the next few months :)
        
       | logicslave wrote:
       | Google cloud is trash
        
       | idclip wrote:
       | Aah, i cant trust google services anymore, sadly. More so if
       | critical.
       | 
       | I even treat my own gmail account with resignation these days.
       | 
       | My Picasa, my rss, my google chat.
       | 
       | Am i wrong to have never touched these cloud services?
       | 
       | I prefer dedicated servers even over AWS, too.
       | 
       | Edit: spellink
       | 
       | Edit2: people downvoting me to hell .. i have to defend my
       | internet points a bit here ..
       | 
       | How should i treat these google services if not with this
       | nihilism? Amazon isn't killing products.
       | 
       | Ill admit to liking kube, but mostly because its open source and
       | "out there" where no one can kill it. Google publishing stuff
       | thats 100% in its control sends a shiver down my long-term-
       | service thinking. Add "Fleets" to it and i get a sense of dread
       | at the thought.
        
         | marcinzm wrote:
         | There's valid concerns about Google Cloud support (or lack
         | thereof), Google account shutdowns without notice/recourse and
         | Google price increases (ie: maps, kubernetes). Google shutting
         | down cloud given its massive revenue and likely many long term
         | contracts with horrible penalty clauses isn't I feel a valid
         | concern.
        
         | google234123 wrote:
         | Amazon has killed many products/services over the years...
        
           | baskire wrote:
           | Such as?
        
         | orf wrote:
         | Yes you are so totally right because a huge company scrapped a
         | b2c legacy acquired photo product you liked whilst merging it
         | with another service, they are going to shut down their multi-
         | billion dollar b2b cloud offering in a strategic growth market
         | at any moment without warning. Thank you for pointing this out!
         | And can I say how much I enjoy seeing this same comment
         | repeated on every google cloud post.
        
       | tbobm wrote:
       | I can not find the use-cases this might answer, is this supposed
       | to replace IaC tools such as ansible or Terraform? AFAIK using
       | standard GCE instances and updating them or re-rovisioning them
       | is a quite cheap operation, I'm not sure where this stands in the
       | whole "pet vs cattle" spectrum. I could be missing something, I
       | am genuinely curious about this new product.
        
         | leg100 wrote:
         | VM Manager is three separate services, one of which is "OS
         | config management", which is more akin to Ansible (or Puppet,
         | Chef, etc), i.e. provisioning software on a system. The other
         | two services look after themselves TBH.
         | 
         | The OS config mangement in practice is a daemon that polls for
         | "guest policies" every 10 minutes. Their example policies will
         | give you a good idea of what it does:
         | 
         | https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/os-config-management/c...
         | 
         | Or better still, the `google_os_config_guest_policies`
         | terraform resource:
         | 
         | https://registry.terraform.io/providers/hashicorp/google/lat...
         | 
         | (Essentially it's pretty basic stuff: configuring package
         | repos, installing packages, running scripts, and copying
         | artefacts).
        
       | davidbrennerjr wrote:
       | So it looks similar to AWS Systems Manager, but only for Windows
       | and Linux in GCP. In their Youtube video at
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeaA66WUaaM&feature=youtu.be
       | they're saying however you're doing "patch compliance" whether
       | it's orchestration or by-hand it is still essentially being done
       | incrementally by hand possibly one package at a time. So instead
       | of using Terraform/Ansible/Vagrant to connect to GCP you can use
       | their VM manager to perform bulk updating of OS packages. Their
       | VM manager relies on agent software to connect directly to your
       | VM to issue system commands via your OS native console.
        
       | ROARosen wrote:
       | Is this intended only for VM's on GCP, or anywhere?
        
       | pm90 wrote:
       | This is really nice. Many/most enterprises likely still deploy on
       | VM's so this is likely a godsend to sysadmins/whoever has to
       | manage large number of VMs.
        
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       (page generated 2021-01-28 23:01 UTC)