Google Cloud Platform (GCP) monitoring

Monitoring resources hosted in GCP allows you to check their availability, get a birds-eye view of their health and performance, and better plan resource allocation. View the complete list of GCP services supported for monitoring here.

Benefits of Site24x7's GCP monitoring

• Maintain availability at individual resource levels.
• Use the Guidance Report, inventory reports, and many more reports to optimize resource allocation.
• Leverage instant alerts in case of outages or performance degradation.

Types

How to set up monitoring

1. Log in to the Site24x7 portal.
2. Click Cloud in the left navigation pane, and then click GCP > Add GCP Monitor.
3. Provide an appropriate Display Name for the monitor and fill in the Project ID.
4. Click Upload a Service Account JSON File to upload the key to your Google Cloud service account.
   • Refer to our help document to learn how to create a service account.
   • If you have a service account already with the necessary permissions, follow these instructions to get the service account JSON key. This key is required to authenticate Site24x7 for resource discovery.
     1. Log in to your Google Cloud console.
     2. Navigate to IAM & Admin > Service Accounts.
     3. Open the service account for which you would like to create the key.
     4. Under the Keys tab, click Add key > Create New Key.
     5. Select JSON as the key type and click Create.
5. In the Filter Resources section:
   1. Service/Resource Types: Select the Google Cloud resource types you would like to monitor.
   2. Metric Profile: Select an existing metric profile from the drop-down menu, or create a new profile using the + icon next to this field to select only the metrics for which you would like Site24x7 to make API calls and collect.
   3. Exclude/Include Resources using Labels/Tags: Enter the tags you have used in Google Cloud so that only the resources with those tags will be included in or excluded from monitoring.
   4. Auto-discover New Resources: Enabling this field automatically discovers and monitors any new resource created in the Google Cloud console.
   5. Discovery Interval: Set the frequency at which resource auto-discovery should happen.
   6. Auto create monitor groups:
      • Yes: A monitor group will be created with the name of the project, and all resources in the project will be listed under the monitor group.
      • No: A monitor group will not be created.
   7. Display Server Monitor After Integration:
      • Yes: The VM's performance and health metrics will be listed in both the Servers tab and also on the Google Cloud VM's monitor page.
      • No: The VM's performance and health metrics will be listed only on the Google Cloud VM's monitor page.
   8. Sync Display Name from Agent Configuration:
      • Yes: The server monitor name will be synchronized with the resource name.
      • No: The server monitor name will be synchronized with the VM's hostname.
6. In the Resource Termination Settings section:
   1. Mute Resource Termination Alerts:
      • Yes: Mutes all the alerts triggered when a Google Cloud resource is terminated.
      • No: Alerts will be triggered when a Google Cloud resource is terminated.
   2. Monitor Terminated Resources:
      • Yes: When a resource is terminated in the Google Cloud portal, monitoring will continue, but the monitor's status will be displayed as down.
      • No: Automatically removes the resources terminated in the Google Cloud portal from monitoring.
   3. Automatically Remove Terminated Resources:
      • Yes: If a resource is terminated in the Google Cloud portal, the respective monitor will be removed after a preset time limit. You can set the time limit in the Remove Terminated Resources After field, and it will be enabled only after setting Yes.
      • No: Moves the respective monitors for the resources terminated in the Google Cloud portal to a suspended state, and then they will be deleted. Suspended monitors do not consume monitoring licenses.
7. In the Guidance Report Configuration section:
   • Enable all Best Practice Checks and Use Default Baselines
     Site24x7's Guidance Report analyzes your GCP account using our best practice recommendation checks and provides insights to reduce costs and improve performance. If you want to enable all checks and use default baselines, keep the toggle at Yes. If you're going to choose the recommendations and configure custom baselines (only applicable for the following checks: VM Instances - Underutilization and VM Instances - Highutilization) toggle the option to No. 

   • How can I create a new baseline for the VM Instances check?

     1. Toggle the Enable all Best Practice Checks and Use Default Baselines option to No. The page should refresh, and a new section listing all the guidance report checks should appear.

     2. Select VM Instances - Underutilization and VM Instances - Highutilization checks and configure new values for the metrics CPU Usage, Network In, and Network Out.
        
        
     3. Click Save.
8. In the Auto-assign Threshold Profile section:
   1. Go to Cloud > GCP and click the GCP monitor. Click any of the service types listed in the left panel, then select the desired resource monitor.
   2. Hover over the hamburger icon beside the display name, then click Edit.
   3. In the Edit GCP Resource Monitor page under Advanced Configuration  > Auto-assign Threshold Profile:
      • Overwrite Existing Settings: Toggle Yes to overwrite the existing threshold profile settings.
      • Configure a Default Threshold Profile for every service supported: Select the threshold profile which you want to overwrite.
      • You can also create new threshold profiles by clicking the + icon.
9. In the Configuration Profiles section:
   1. Associate with Monitor Group(s): Select the monitor groups you would like to associate with the monitor you are creating. Use the + icon to create a new monitor group.
   2. Dependent on Monitor: Select the monitor on which the monitor you are creating is dependent on. For example, if your Google Cloud project monitor is dependent on an organization monitor, when the organization monitor is down, only one alert will be triggered for the organization monitor. The redundant project monitor alert will not be triggered. This is to reduce alert fatigue.
   3. Tags: Select the tags you would like to associate with the monitor you are creating. Click the Add Tag button to create a new tag.
   4. IT Automation Templates: Set auto-remediation actions via an IT Automation template to run during outages and performance degradation scenarios in the Select Automation drop-down menu, and also set conditions on when to execute them in the next field.
   5. Execute IT Automation during Scheduled Maintenance: Check this box to run auto-remediation IT Automation actions, even during scheduled maintenance time frames.
10. In the Alert Settings section:
    1. User Alert Group: Select the user alert group to which you would like to send notifications related to the monitor you are creating.
    2. On-Call Schedule: Select an On-Call Schedule so that the alerts reach the appropriate person at the appropriate time.
    3. Notification Profile: Select the required Notification Profile to set how notifications should be sent. Use the + icon to create a new Notification Profile.
11. Click Start GCP Monitoring.

Service View

Click Cloud > GCP > the Google Cloud monitor > Service View to view this dashboard. This dashboard is also the page you will view once you have created a new Google Cloud monitor. The Service View dashboard contains all your Google Cloud resource monitors grouped into respective service types.

Infrastructure Dashboard

Click Cloud > GCP > the Google Cloud monitor > Infrastructure Dashboard to view this dashboard. This dashboard presents a NOC view of all the Google Cloud resources discovered in your account. In addition to the NOC view of monitors under each resource type, you can filter your monitors based on service type, location, or status. Hovering over each NOC box will show you the monitor's display name, and clicking it will take you to the respective monitor's page.

Inventory Dashboard

Click Cloud > GCP > the Google Cloud monitor > Inventory Dashboard to view this dashboard. This dashboard gives you the count of Google Cloud resources being monitored as a donut chart, the daily usage of Google Cloud resources based on service type, and a report view of Google Cloud resource monitors under each resource type, with the location, count of resources, and zone details.

All Resources

Click Cloud > GCP > the Google Cloud monitor > All Resources to view this page. This page contains the count of monitors based on their status, your license usage, and a list of all monitors. The hamburger icon next to each monitor provides options for each Google Cloud resource monitor, like edit, add to a monitor group, schedule maintenance, suspend, or delete.

Management Actions

Click Cloud > GCP > the Google Cloud monitor > Management Actions to view Management Actions page, which lets you manage your Google Cloud resources from the Site24x7 console.

The Management Actions page lists active and deleted Google Cloud resource monitors. In the Active Resources tab, you can perform actions like starting or stopping VMs. In the Deleted Resources tab, you can re-add deleted monitors.

Operations

Click Cloud > GCP > the Google Cloud monitor > Operations to view Operations page. This page lists the actions performed in the Google Cloud console and helps administrators troubleshoot.

Guidance Report

Click Cloud > GCP > the Google Cloud monitor > Guidance Report to view Site24x7's Google Cloud Guidance Report, which suggests best practices based on your Google Cloud resources. Site24x7 has collected the industry's best practices and framed them as a Guidance Report which, when acted upon, improves your Google Cloud setup's reliability, availability, and cost efficiency. Learn more about this feature in our help document on Guidance Reports.

Enhanced VM Monitoring with server monitoring agent

Default Google Cloud compute instance monitoring provides you the health and performance metrics of the compute instance at the Google Cloud resource level. To get enhanced monitoring capabilities and monitor health and performance metrics like CPU utilization and disk utilization, we recommend installing our server monitoring agent package in your Google Cloud VMs.

To install our lightweight server monitoring agent, follow the instructions provided in the help document for installing the server monitoring agent.

Alerts

Configure when to trigger alerts with a threshold profile. Creating a profile makes it easier to apply this configuration to multiple monitors.

To configure a threshold profile, click Cloud > GCP > the Google Cloud monitor > the hamburger icon beside the Google Cloud resource monitor > Edit.

Use the drop-down menu provided in the Threshold and Availability field in the Configuration Profiles section. If you do not have a threshold profile already, click the + icon beside the field to create a new threshold profile. Learn more about alert settings in our help document for Threshold and Availability.

How Site24x7 monitors your Google Cloud resources

Site24x7 sends one or more requests to the Cloud API of each resource and derives data for each minute. Data collection happens every five minutes. Site24x7 analyzes the data and presents it in user-desired reports or dashboard formats. If the user has set thresholds, Site24x7 checks if the derived data corresponds to the configured threshold limit. If there is any breach, an alert will be triggered.

Site24x7's GCP monitoring is done by fetching the access keys in the service account JSON file uploaded by the user in the Site24x7 web client. The private keys in the JSON file are stored in an encrypted format. Performance metrics for GCP monitoring are collected using the GCP Monitor REST API. Learn the permissions that you need to enable GCP monitoring.

License consumption

The parent Google Cloud project monitor consumes one basic monitor license. In addition to that, each Google Cloud resource consumes one basic monitor license. Each Google Cloud VM instance (Compute Engine) consumes two basic monitor licenses.

What's next for you?

• Other supported cloud platforms: Azure | AWS
• Enable IT Automation for auto-remediation
• Integrate Third party applications with Site24x7
• Start server monitoring
• Possible reasons why GCP resources are not added for monitoring