Partnering on open source: Google and HashiCorp engineers on managing GCP infrastructure
Eric Johnson
Engineering Manager
Earlier in January, we shared the first episode of a video mini-series highlighting how the Google Cloud Graphite team is making open source software work great with the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Today, we’re kicking off the next chapter of the series, featuring HashiCorp’s open-source DevOps tools and how to use them with GCP.
HashiCorp open source tools simplify application delivery, helping users provision, secure and run infrastructure for any applications. We kick off the series with a high-level overview, featuring Kelsey Hightower, Staff Developer Advocate for GCP, and Armon Dadgar, CTO and co-founder of HashiCorp.
Then, for our next installment, we show HashiCorp and GCP in action. Imagine a small, independent game studio working on its next title — a retro 1980s style arcade game updated for multiplayer and playable over the web. Watch as the team engages in collaborative development, demos the game to their CEO and deploys it for public release. Along the way, we feature:
- Vagrant, which allows developers to create repeatable development environments to be used by any member of a team without consulting operators. Vagrant can easily spin up remote VMs on Google Compute Engine and allows developers shared access to the same VM — ideal for collaborative development.
- Packer, which with a single configuration file, produces machine images for many target environments, including Compute Engine. The ease with which Packer images can be easily described and built make it an ideal fit with DevOps concepts such as immutable infrastructure and continuous delivery.
- Terraform, which helps operators safely and predictably create, modify and destroy production infrastructure. It codifies APIs into declarative configuration files that can be shared amongst team members, treated as code, edited, reviewed and versioned. Operators can thus manage GCP resources spanning many products — key when provisioning scalable production infrastructure.
