IAP command chaining

Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) is a powerful tool in the tool chain of Google Cloud administrators and users. It can be used to control access to cloud-based and on-premises applications and VMs running on Google Cloud. IAP adds *common *authentication and authorization infrastructure based on Cloud IAM to connections without the need for a change to program or protocol logic.…

Enabling cross-project Microsoft Managed Active Directory integration for Cloud SQL for SQL Server

One of the most requested features from customers that deploy Cloud SQL for SQL Server (Cloud SQL) has been Active Directory integration which was released last year. Since then Google Cloud has added cross-project capability which allows you to connect your Cloud SQL instance into a project that is different than the one hosting Managed Microsoft AD (Managed AD).…

Automatically joining VMs to Active Directory on Google Cloud

Many enterprises that migrate their IT estate to cloud will face the question on how to continue to support operations across workloads that remain on-premises and workloads that are migrated to cloud. While virtual machines (VMs) behave largely the same in cloud from a data plane (what is happening on the inside of the VM), control plane functions can differ significantly.…

Manually re-balance VMs on sole-tenant nodes with "Migrate within node group" maintenance policy set

Sole-tenant nodes are an important service on Google Cloud Platform to run workloads that require workload isolation or need to comply to specific licensing requirements that demand dedicated infrastructure. A detailed description what a Sole-Tenant Node is and how it is different from general fleet VMs can be found in the Compute Engine documentation.…

Moving VMs between sole-tenant node groups

Sole-tenant nodes are being used by customers for workload isolation and also for licensing compliance (e.g. bringing Window Server licenses). Throughout the life cycle of a sole-tenant node there might be the necessity of moving virtual machines to another node group or even to another machine family (e.…

Hibernate ORM with Cloud Spanner

Google just released beta support for Cloud Spanner dialect for Hibernate ORM. This enables Java (and other JVM based languages) developers integrating their applications directly with Cloud Spanner and helps them to increase productivity. Support for Hibernate ORM is built on top of the open source Cloud Spanner JDBC driver.…

Rethink. Reset. Restart.

Rethink. In May I started my journey with HorseAnalytics serving as their CTO. Just a couple of weeks into my tenure the unthinkable happened: money ran out and we were not able to secure bridge funding to see the motion we already set into motion to an end.…