Help GCP Monitoring

Monitor Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Use a single tool to auto-discover and monitor all your Google cloud services, identify performance bottlenecks, and address issues instantly.

Add a Monitor

  1. Log in to Site24x7 and go to GCP > Add GCP Monitor. 
  2. Provide a unique Display Name for identification purposes.
  3. Upload a Service Account JSON File to authenticate Site24x7 for performing resource discovery.
    To create a service account key, log in to your GCP console and go to IAM & Admin > Service Accounts > look for the service account for which you wish to create a key > click the : button under Actions > Create Key > select the Key Type as JSON > Create. Ensure your service account has sufficient permission(s) to perform this action. Know what permissions you need to enable GCP Monitoring.
  4. Select the resources that you wish to monitor.
    Currently, Site24x7 supports monitoring of the following GCP services:
    • Google Kubernetes Engine
    • Virtual Machines
    • Google Cloud Functions
    • Storage Services
    • Redis
    • Cloud Pub/Sub
    • Networking Services
    • Cloud Spanner
    • Google App Engine
    • Cloud Firestore
    • Cloud SQL
    • Load Balancing
    • VPN Tunnel
    • Cloud Dataflow
  5. Select existing Notification Profiles, User Alerts Groups, Tags, and IT Automations, or add new ones. You can also integrate Site24x7 alarms with your preferred third party service. Click on Start GCP Monitoring. 

Please wait a few minutes for all of your GCP resources to be discovered and added in Site24x7's web client. Once discovery is complete, you'll be directed to the Infrastructure dashboard. 

Resources still not added? Check out possible reasons why GCP resources are not added for monitoring. 

New resources will only be discovered once every five minutes. 

Dashboards

There are two exclusive dashboards for GCP monitoring in Site24x7. You can also create custom dashboards.

Infrastructure Dashboard:

Once you've successfully added a GCP monitor, you'll be directed to the Infrastructure dashboard. This represents a NOC view of all the GCP resources discovered from your account. Hover on the hamburger icon beside the page title to edit, suspend, and delete the GCP monitor. 

Highlights:

  • See the number of GCP resources discovered, separated into different service types, in a single dashboard.
  • View resources according to their status: UP, DOWN, DISCOVERY IN PROGRESS, CRITICAL, MAINTENANCE, or SUSPENDED.
  • Filter resources based on service types, location, and status.
  • Click on a NOC box to go to that particular monitor's Summary page.

Infrastructure Dashboard

Inventory Dashboard:

Go to GCP > Inventory Dashboard. Like the Infrastructure dashboard, the Inventory dashboard gives you a view of the GCP resources discovered from your account. Hover on the hamburger icon beside the page title to edit, suspend, and delete the GCP monitor. 

Highlights:

  • View all discovered GCP resources broken down by service type in a single pie chart. Hover over a section of the chart to see the resources under a particular service type.
  • View the daily usage of critical GCP resources for a set of service types.
  • Under Inventory Details of GCP Resources, get a tabular view of all your GCP resources, along with their respective number of locations, resources, and zones. Click on a service to view a detailed inventory report based on name, zone, type, license, users etc. 

Inventory Dashboard

Custom Dashboard:

You can build your own dashboard that displays various key metrics across all your GCP resources. To start, navigate to Home > Dashboards > Custom Dashboards > + Create new.

  1. Provide a suitable name and description for your dashboard.
  2. Under Widget Category, choose either from Performance Widgets, Top N Widgets, or Current Status Widgets.
  3. Select All Monitors under Filter Monitors by Monitor Group. Under Monitor Type, select GCP.
  4. Choose the desired service type Template.
  5. Pick your GCP resources under Choose Monitors to create your dashboard.
  6. Select the required Time Period and drag and drop the widgets onto the working space.
  7. When you're done, click on Done Customizing at the top of the page.

Management Actions

Go to GCP > Management Actions. Under these management actions, you can manage all your GCP resources in one console. Start/stop VMs, delete your resources, and filter resources based on service types, location, and monitor status for better visibility. Hover on the hamburger icon beside the page title to edit, suspend, and delete the GCP monitor.

Tip: Only a Site24x7 Admin or Super Admin can perform these actions. 

When you delete a resource, Site24x7 will stop monitoring it. That resource will not be deleted from your GCP account. On the other hand, if a resource is deleted from your GCP account (in the GCP console), it will still be visible in the Site24x7 web client, but the monitor status will be DOWN.

Management Actions

Operations

All actions that you perform in the GCP console will be listed here (activity logs). Track events that affect your project, monitor operation logs, system logs etc.

Security Tip: Site24x7 does not store this data; the data is fetched using APIs and presented in this dashboard.

For example, a user stops a resource in the GCP console. The action will be automatically listed in the Site24x7 web client in the Operations tab. This will help other users in the account aware of such an action and if its a wrong step, the resource can be immediately started to avoid any performance degradation. 

GCP Operations

Alerting

You can create new or associate existing threshold profiles for every GCP resource that's being monitored. Follow the steps below to create a threshold profile:

  1. Go to GCP > click on a service type > click on the resource you'd like to associate with a threshold profile.
  2. Hover over the hamburger icon next to the display name. Click Edit.
  3. Under Advanced Configuration > Threshold and Availability, click on the plus icon (+) to create a new profile. Click on the pencil icon to edit an existing profile. Save your changes.

Alerting

Reports

Log in to Site24x7 and go to Reports > GCP. The reports available for GCP monitoring are Availability Summary, Performance, and Top N Reports by Attribute. You can also create custom reports.

Monitor Groups

You can associate both service types and individual resources with Monitor Groups.

Service type level:

Once a service type is added, a monitor group called GCP - <GCP Project Name> - System Generated is created automatically. Go to Home > Monitor Groups. Click on the created monitor group and navigate to the Business View tab. This view helps you spot outliers and detect unusual monitoring patterns in your monitor group and associated subgroups (Note: resource groups are considered subgroups). Learn more.

Business View

Resource monitor level:

  1. Log in to the Site24x7 web client and go to GCP and click on the GCP monitor. Click on 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 > Associate Monitor Groups, select an existing monitor group from the drop-down or use the plus icon (+) to create a new one.

GCP VM-Server Integration

Install the Server Monitoring Extension to get in-depth system-level metrics for your GCP Virtual Machines (VM).

  1. Go to Cloud > GCP > click on the GCP account > VM Instance.
  2. Click on the VM instance on which you wish to install the extension. Go to Server Monitoring Extension tab. 
  3. Click on Install Agent. Select the preferred OS platform and install the extension in your VM. 

Once the agent is successfully installed, you will be able to see system-level metrics for your GCP VMs.  

Security

Site24x7 GCP monitoring is done by fetching the access keys in the Service Account JSON file that is uploaded by the user in the Site24x7 web client. The private keys in the JSON file is encrypted and Site24x7 does not have any access over it. Performance metrics for GCP monitoring are collected using the GCP Monitor REST API. Know the permissions that you should have to enable GCP monitoring. 

Licensing

One GCP service/resource uses up one basic monitor. 

FAQs

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Help GCP Monitoring