The new VM Manager should make it easier and quicker to manage large fleets of instances on Google Cloud.
Google’s Compute Engine has become a popular way of helping companies maintain their online resources on an ever larger scale. This week, Google Cloud introduced a new suite of infrastructure management tools to automate and simplify that large-scale maintenance work.
Tackling the complex nature of VM management
Google Cloud product manager Ravi Kiran Chintalapudi and product marketing manager Senanu Aggor announced the new product in a blog post. Dubbed VM Manager, the new service aims to help manage and operate large fleets of virtual machines (VM).
“Managing infrastructure security and compliance visibility at cloud scale can be challenging for infrastructure and operations administrators,” they write. “Customers tell us they need simplified cloud-native tools to operate and manage their cloud resources.”
The new VM Manager toolkit meets that need, say Chintalapudi and Aggor.
For example, VM Manager comes with a patching tool that finds outdated copies of Windows and Linux in customer environments. After locating the instances with outdated OS, the IT teams deploy updates via Google Cloud’s administrator console. Alternatively, they can have VM Manager perform the task automatically using a built-in patch scheduling feature.
The VM Manager also features a single dashboard to increase compliance visibility and real-time tracking of inventory data to drive actionable insights and maintain peak infrastructure performance.
Making large fleet management easy
VM Manager reduces complexity, improves security and compliance reporting, according to Google. The platform also simplifies monitoring resources in a large cloud environment.
VM Manager also provides automation features for finding outdated applications and patching them. Admins can also access an additional tool that allows them to set rules for what software components should be installed in cloud instances. They can also specify how the components should be configured.
If VM Manager identifies that a part of a Google Cloud deployment isn’t in compliance with the rules, it automatically fixes the misconfigured settings.
These automation tools also reduce the risk of downtime and improve productivity of internal users, according to Chintalapudi and Aggor. This has made life easier for admins, according to the feedback they received so far.
“Early VM Manager users tell us that it allows their IT administrators to focus on other business critical tasks,” they claim.
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