Introduction

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The following sections provide an overview of Google Cloud Platform and the Google Cloud Platform PowerPack:

What is Google Cloud Platform?

Google Cloud Platform is a suite of modular, cloud-based products and services that enables users to build, test, deploy, and manage applications for web, mobile, and back-end solutions. It combines physical assets and virtual resources that users can utilize for computing, data storage, networking, and other solutions.

What Does the Google Cloud Platform PowerPack Monitor?

To monitor GCP resources using SL1, you must install the Google Cloud Platform PowerPack. This PowerPack enables you to discover, model, and collect performance and configuration data about GCP resources.

The Google Cloud Platform PowerPack includes:

  • Dynamic Applications to discover, model, and collect configuration data and performance metrics for GCP services and resources

  • Device Classes for each type of GCP device that SL1 monitors, plus Device Classes for each region and zone the Google Cloud Platform PowerPack supports
  • Event Policies that are triggered when GCP resources meet certain status criteria
  • A sample Credential that you can use to create SOAP/XML credentials to monitor GCP devices
  • The ScienceLogic Libraries that are utilized by the PowerPack

What is the GCP Resource Hierarchy?

The GCP resource hierarchy is a tiered methodology that determines GCP resource ownership, in which child resources inherit the access control policies and configuration settings of their parent resources.

The GCP resource hierarchy consists of the following levels: 

  • Organization. The Organization resource represents an organization, such as a company, and is the top level of the hierarchy for your GCP account. An account can have only one Organization associated with it. Organizations are not required resources, but when an account includes one, every project created by users of that account will belong to that Organization resource by default.
  • Folders. Folders are essentially a tool for organizing resources and creating borders between Projects. For example, they could represent different departments or teams within an Organization. Folders can include one or more Projects or additional sub-folders. Like Organizations, Folders are not required resources.
  • Projects. Projects are the primary resources used for organizing other GCP resources. Unlike Organizations and Folders, Projects are required. From the Project level, GCP users can create, enable, and use all GCP services and resources; manage APIs and permissions; and perform other managerial tasks.

The Google Cloud Platform PowerPack enables you to discover GCP resources at either the Organization or Project hierarchy level.

What are GCP Regions and Zones?

GCP resources are hosted in data centers around the globe. A GCP region is an individual data center located in a specific geographic locale. Regional resources are accessible by any resource within the same region. Examples of regional resources include IP addresses, subnets, regionally managed instance groups, and regional operations.

Each region consists of one or more zones. Zone-specific resources are unique to that zone and accessible only by other resources in the same zone. Examples of zone resources include instances, disks, machine types, zone-managed instance groups, and per-zone operations.

Zone names include the region name combined with a letter identifier. For example, "zone a" in the East Asia region is named "asia-east1-a".

The Dynamic Applications in the Google Cloud Platform PowerPack create a "region" component device for each discovered data center region and a "zone" component device for each zone discovered under those regions.

The PowerPack supports the following GCP regions and zones:

  • Generic Region/Zone

  • Asia East 1 (Taiwan)
  • Asia East 2 (Hong Kong)
  • Asia Northeast 1 (Tokyo)
  • Asia Northeast 2 (Osaka)
  • Asia South (Mumbai)
  • Asia Southeast 1 (Singapore)
  • Australia Southeast 1 (Sydney)
  • Europe North 1 (Finland)
  • Europe West 1 (Belgium)
  • Europe West 2 (London)
  • Europe West 3 (Frankfurt)
  • Europe West 4 (Eemshaven)
  • Europe West 6 (Zurïch)
  • North America Northeast 1 (Montréal)
  • South America East 1 (São Paulo)
  • US Central 1 (Iowa)
  • US East 1 (South Carolina)
  • US East 4 (Northern Virginia)
  • US West 1 (Oregon)
  • US West 2 (Los Angeles)
  • Multi-Region Asia
  • Multi-Region Europe North 1 / Europe West 4
  • Multi-Region European Union
  • Multi-Region United States
  • Multi-Region US Central 1 / US East 1

Installing the Google Cloud Platform PowerPack

Before completing the steps in this section, you must import and install the latest version of the Google Cloud Platform PowerPack.

ScienceLogic does not recommend using version 101 of the Google Cloud Platform PowerPack because of installation and collection issues which can arise in some system configurations. When upgrading from version 100 to later versions, ScienceLogic recommends that you delete your previously discovered Google Cloud devices as well as version 100 of the PowerPack, and then install version 102 or later. This is because the collections and devices present in version 100 is not compatible with later releases.

By default, installing a new version of a PowerPack overwrites all content from a previous version of that PowerPack that has already been installed on the target system. You can use the Enable Selective PowerPack Field Protection setting in the Behavior Settings page (System > Settings > Behavior) to prevent new PowerPacks from overwriting local changes for some commonly customized fields. (For more information, see the section on Global Settings.)

The minimum required MySQL version is 5.6.0.

To download and install the PowerPack:

  1. Search for and download the PowerPack from the PowerPacks page (Product Downloads > PowerPacks & SyncPacks) at the ScienceLogic Support Site.
  2. In SL1, go to the PowerPacks page (System > Manage > PowerPacks).
  3. Click the Actions button and choose Import PowerPack. The Import PowerPack dialog box appears.
  4. Click [Browse] and navigate to the PowerPack file from step 1.
  5. Select the PowerPack file and click Import. The PowerPack Installer modal displays a list of the PowerPack contents.
  6. Click Install. The PowerPack is added to the PowerPacks page.

If you exit the PowerPack Installer modal without installing the imported PowerPack, the imported PowerPack will not appear in the PowerPacks page. However, the imported PowerPack will appear in the Imported PowerPacks modal. This page appears when you click the Actions menu and select Install PowerPack.