GCP

Prerequisite: Set Up Proxy

Set up a proxy or load balancer that will intercept and manage traffic to your resources. This component is what enables the seamless start/stop functionality.

An AutoStopping Proxy is a virtual machine that sits in front of your virtual machines and intelligently starts or stops them based on incoming traffic. It supports both HTTP(S) and TCP connections. Built on the proven, open-source Envoy Proxy, the AutoStopping Proxy is capable of managing traffic for multiple AutoStopping-managed VMs from a single instance

In Harness, go to the Cloud Costs module. Click on AutoStopping Rules from left Navbar.
Click Load Balancers.
Click +Create New Load Balancer. Click Create New AutoStopping Proxy.
Enter a name and select GCP in Cloud Provider.
Choose an existing connector or create a new one.
Enter Autostopping Proxy Configuration.
- Region: Select the GCP region where your target resources are hosted
- Zone: Select the zone from the dropdown list.
- VPC: Select the Virtual Private Cloud where your resources are located
- Network tags: Select the Network tags to enable ports on the proxy VM which would be receiving traffic or the one that would be used to access the proxy.
- Subnet: Select the subnet for the proxy deployment
- Machine type: Select an appropriate AWS instance type for the proxy
  - Choose based on your expected traffic volume and performance needs
- TLS Certificate Secret Version: Create a secret in your GCP account. Go to Create a secret.
- TLS Private Key Secret Version: Provide the ARN of your private key secret
- API Key: Enter a valid NG API key. Choose No Expiration in the Expiration dropdown list while creating this API key. Go to Create an API Key for more information.
- [OPTIONAL] Enable Allocate Static IP if you need to assign an elastic IP address to make the VM publicly accessible. Update the DNS route to point to the public IP. You don't need to enable this field it is pointing to a private IP provided the DNS resolves. For example, when the DNS resolution is done within the VPC.
Click Save AutoStopping Proxy.

Ensure that the file uploaded in the Secret value field is not encrypted or encoded. It must be a plaintext certificate.

Create AutoStopping Rule

In Harness, navigate to Cloud Costs > AutoStopping Rules and click New AutoStopping Rule.

Step 1: Configuration

Enter a Name for your rule
AutoStopping Type: Choose how you want your resources to be managed automatically. You can either choose Traffic-based with schedules optionally or Schedules only.
- Traffic-based with schedules optionally: Resources automatically stop when idle and restart when traffic is detected. You can configure schedule overrides in advanced settings.
- Schedules only: Resources automatically start and stop based on defined schedules. You can configure multiple schedules in advanced settings.

Please note: Schedule-only rules ccxcxdan be changed to traffic-based during edit, but traffic-based rules cannot be reverted to schedule-only. (Schedules on traffic-based rules remain editable)

Set the Idle Time - how long an instance should be inactive before stopping
From the Resources to be managed section, choose the resource type you want to manage:

Click on + Add an instance. Add the instances that you want to manage by this rule.

Click on + Add instance group. Add the instance groups that you want to manage by this rule. And optionally choose to convert the selected instance(s) to spot or remain on-demand.

Advanced Configuration (Optional):

Hide Progress Page: Toggle this to disable the display of a progress page during instance warm-up.
Dry-Run: Toggle this button if you wish to evaluate the feature without terminating your cloud resources.

Link your rule to other AutoStopping rules if resources depend on each other.

Click Add Dependency and select a rule from the RULES drop-down list.
In DELAY IN SECS, enter the number of seconds the dependent rule should wait after warming up before warming up this rule.

Create fixed uptime or downtime schedules for the resources managed by this rule. A fixed schedule takes precedence over the idle time logic.

Click Add Fixed Schedule.
Give the schedule a Name.
Select the Type of schedule (Uptime or Downtime).
Select the Time Zone.
Set the schedule period with Begins on and Ends on dates and times. You can also select the Never ends checkbox.
To set a recurring schedule, select the repeat frequency and the days of the week, and set the Start and End times. You can also select All Day.

Click to expand advanced configuration details

(Optional) Set up advanced configuration

In this step, you can configure the following settings:

Hide progress page

Toggle the button to disable the display of progress page during instances' warming up process. This option is especially useful when the service is invoked by an automation system, as it prevents misinterpretation of the progress page as the intended response from a service that is onboarded to AutoStopping. By hiding the progress page, the first response of warming up a rule after a downtime will be delayed until the intended service is up and running.

Dry Run

Toggle the button if you wish to evaluate this feature without terminating your cloud resources.

Add Dependency

Set dependencies between two or more AutoStopping Rules when you want one Rule to make one or more Rules to be active based on the traffic that it receives. For example for an application server dependent on a database server, create two AutoStopping Rules managing both the servers. Add a dependency on the Rule managing the application server to be dependent on the Rule managing the database server.

Click add dependency to add a dependency on any existing rule.
Select the rule from the RULES drop-down list.
In DELAY IN SECS, enter the number of seconds that rule should wait after warming up the dependent rule. For example, you have Rule 1 dependent on Rule 2 and you have set 5 seconds delay. In that case, when the request is received to warm up Rule 1, then first Rule 2 (dependent rule) is warmed up, and then there is a delay of 5 seconds before warming up Rule 1.
Once you're done with all the configurations, click Next.

Fixed Schedule

Create fixed uptime or downtime schedules for the resources managed by this AutoStopping Rule. When a resource is configured to go up or down on a fixed schedule, it is unaffected by activity or idleness during that time period.

In certain scenarios, you would not want your resources to go down or up. For example, every Friday at 5 p.m. you want your ABC resource to go down. You can schedule downtime for your ABC resource. During this window, the resource is forced to go down regardless of the defined rule. You can choose to specify uptime for your resources in the same way.

The fixed schedule takes precedence over the defined AutoStopping Rule.

Harness executes scheduled rules using Dkron, an open-source workload automation service.

To create a fixed schedule for your rule, do the following:

In Fixed Schedules, click Add Fixed Schedule.
In New Fixed Schedule, enter a Name for your schedule.
In Type, select the type for your schedule. You can schedule an Uptime or Downtime for your rule. As per your schedule, the resources go up or down.
Select the Time Zone from the drop-down list.
In Set schedule period, use the date picker to set the start and end time for your schedule.
1. In Begins on, select the start date and time for your schedule. You can select a date and specify the time.
2. In Ends on, select the end date and time for your schedule. You can select a date and specify the time. Ensure that Never ends checkbox is unselected to set the end time.
If you don't specify an end time, the schedule continues to run until you manually update the settings or remove the schedule.
Select the checkbox Never ends if you do not want to set end time for your schedule.
You can also set a recurring schedule for the rule. If you want to set a recurring schedule, in Uptime/Downtime in the selected period, in Repeats, select the repeat frequency.
1. Select which days of the week you'd like your schedule to repeat. You can choose any day between Sunday and Saturday.
2. Select Everyday, to set the schedule for all seven days of the week.
3. Set your repeat schedule's beginning and ending time. In the Time field, specify the start and end time for the fixed schedule.
4. Select All Day, if you wish to set your schedule for the entire day. If you choose All Day for your schedule, you won't be able to choose a start and end time.

Step 2: Setup Access

Choose how users will access your VM instances:

Setup Access for TCP workload or SSH/RDP

Setting up access for TCP workload or SSH/RDP allows AutoStopping to detect activity and idleness, and ensure that the database is up and running only when you need it. Use the AutoStopping Proxy URL (IP/Hostname of the Proxy and a unique autogenerated port number) for this AutoStopping Rule when you connect to the RDS database using any database client. The Proxy URL is generated when you save the AutoStopping Rule. If you need to access the resources managed by this AutoStopping rule using TCP or SSH/RDP HTTPS URL, you need to perform the following steps:

Choose an AutoStopping Proxy from the Specify AutoStopping Proxy dropdown list to set up access.
Toggle SSH or RDP to specify the listening ports. The port number is autopopulated based on the security group.
Specify the source port numbers and the target TCP ports your application is listening to. If the source port is not specified, a random port will be generated at the backend. This auto-generated port will continue to be used as long as the target port remains unchanged or unless the user explicitly modifies the source port.
Click Next.

Set up access for HTTP/HTTPS workload

If you need to access the resources managed by this AutoStopping rule using an HTTP or HTTPS URL, you need to perform the following steps:

Choose an AutoStopping Proxy from the dropdown list to set up access.

SSH/RDP Access (AutoStopping Proxy)

Click to expand SSH/RDP access configuration details

Enter Routing Configuration and Health Check Details

If the security groups are configured for the selected instances, then the routing information is auto-populated for those instances. You can edit or delete the routing information. However, it is mandatory to have at least one port listed.
This is the load balancer routing configuration for the underlying application that is running on the cloud resources managed by this AutoStopping rule.
Click Add if you wish to add more ports. The following are some points to consider:
- If you are forwarding the same action to different ports, then specify the server name and/or path match.
- If you specify the server name, then the host uses the custom URL to access the resources. You cannot use an auto-generated URL to access the resources.
Toggle the Health check button to configure the health check. Health check status should be successful for the AutoStopping rules to come into effect. Set a health check for the underlying application that is running on the cloud resources managed by this AutoStopping rule. The load balancer periodically sends requests as per the settings below to the application. If your application does not support health check, or you do not have any application running, you can disable the health check.
By default, the health check is turned on.
In Protocol, select http or https.
Enter Path, port, and timeout details. For example, if you have configured port 80 and the timeout as 30 seconds for your instance, then the AutoStopping rule checks these specified parameters before bringing AutoStopping Rule into effect.

Specify the URL to access the resources

You can use either of the following methods:

Auto-generated URL
Custom URL

Auto-generated URL

Every AutoStopping rule has an auto-generated URL. This URL is a subdomain to the domain name specified for the load balancer. Since the load balancer configures a wildcard domain such as *.autostopping.yourcompany.com, the auto-generated URL works automatically and point to the correct load balancer.

Select Use the auto-generated URL to access the resources managed by this AutoStopping Rule.

Custom URL

AutoStopping rule can use multiple custom domains. In such a case, it should be configured in the DNS provider. AutoStopping Rules also allows you to use custom domains or change the root of your site's URL from the default, like,autostop.harness.io, to any domain you own. To point your site's default domain to a custom domain, you can set it up in your DNS provider.

Enter the custom URL currently used to access the instances. The domain name should be entered without prefixing the scheme. A rule can have multiple URLs. You can enter comma-separated values into a custom URL to support multiple URLs.

In Setup Access, select Proxy from drop-down list or create a new one > click Next.

Step 3: Review

In Review, verify all the configuration details and click Save Rule. To edit any of the configuration settings, click EDIT and modify the settings.

Your AutoStopping rule is listed under the AutoStopping Rules dashboard.

GCP AutoStopping Savings Computation

There are two types of exports in GCP: Standard and Detailed. Ensure the billing export is the detailed billing export. It is important to have a billing-enabled connector set up with detailed billing exports. The billing data will be used to compute savings for GCP instance and instance-group-based rules.

Last updated 9 hours ago

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