ParkMyCloud Now Supports GCP Managed Instance Groups

ParkMyCloud has announced it has made several updates to its cloud cost management and optimization platform including the option to park new types of Google Cloud Platform (GCP) resources.

GCP managed instance groups are Google’s equivalent of AWS Auto Scaling groups. They use an instance template to create identical groups. Rather than manage each instance separately, any changes that are made to one instance can be instantly applied to all others in the group.

Now, through ParkMyCloud, GCP managed instance groups can be parked when they are not in use. ParkMyCloud already allows AWS Auto Scaling groups to be parked, and the functionality to park Microsoft Azure Scale Sets will be added in the next few days.

Instead of simply turning GCP groups on and off, the platform allows you to set high and low stages and set a maximum and minimum number of resources for groups when you set your parking schedules.

For GCP Managed Groups with Autoscaling it is not possible to fully shut off the resources. They can have a minimum of 1 instance in the low or off state. GCP Groups without autoscaling can be fully shut off, and have a minimum size of 0 instances in the low/off state.

Through the ParkMyCloud console, unmanaged groups will appear as regular resources and can be managed and scheduled individually, although it is possible to manage them as a group by creating a ParkMyCloud logical group for scheduling purposes.

Other notable changes in the latest round up updates include the renaming of the schedule ‘Snooze’ option. While the name describes the action well – The snooze function allows users to snooze the schedule and temporarily switch it off – it caused confusion with some customers who assumed that snoozing meant switching off the resources, when only the on/off schedule was paused. Snooze has now been changed to ‘override’ to help clear up this confusion. You can override your normal on/off schedule for a set time period or until a particular time.

ParkMyCloud has also made changes to its 14-day free trial, which now gives potential new customers Enterprise Tier product access, allowing them to try out the product free of charge on unlimited instanced, teams, cloud accounts, and users, and access database parking, SmartParking, and the user import/export feature. This gives new customers a much better idea of the total savings that can be achieved by using the platform.

Current users will benefit from the following updates:

  • New option of exporting the recommendations screen to CSV for easy sharing and analysis.
  • The addition of an online help option on every page in the console that links to the relevant section of the PMC user guide.
  • Superadmins now appear as greyed-out users on all team lists.
  • User-level notifications have been made more visible, with a link from the org/team level notifications screen.
  • The resource screen has been made more mobile-friendly with improvements made to scrolling.
  • Schedule/Start/Stop/Team/Group buttons are now always visible, and only enabled when appropriate instances are checked.
  • The platform also includes several performance improvements for customers with large numbers of recommendations and schedules.

Author: Richard Anderson

Richard Anderson is the Editor-in-Chief of NetSec.news