How to create a serverless Cloud Workstation

[@googlecloudtech]

What ways are you using Cloud Workstation? Let us know in the comments and be sure to subscribe for future episodes of Serverless Expeditions Extended! → goo.gle/GoogleCloudTech

[@ymartino1790]

This looks promising, however to me this looks similar with the existing cloud shell editor functionality, except this one allows us to have more compute power, which obviously comes with extra charges. Not sure whether this is better and cost-effective than what our settings currently have (running one dedicated vm with on/off scheduler shared by team, vs code with remote ssh plugins, scheduled snapshot). In terms of security, works fine so far and managing a single vm for that purpose seemingly less hassle than doing extra works with managing a cluster IMO too. I'm open for any thoughts on this 🤠

[@TheMomander]

It sounds like you've built your own version of Cloud Workstations already. If that works well for your team, keep using it! The Cloud Workstations product can be useful for teams who don't want to build this themselves but would rather use a product that is maintained by Google.

[@ymartino1790]

@@TheMomander yeah, I think I’ll stick with our existing setup for now as it is simpler to maintain and easy to connect to the rest of our infrastructure (cloudsql, gke, etc). Anyway, thanks for your feedback Martin 🙏🏼

[@cryptoexplorateur]

Thank you

[@Babbili]

nice, instead of installing Docker desktop on every developer's machine, so i can move their dev environment to the cloud

[@TheMomander]

Yes, that's exactly it. Life is good in the cloud 🙂

[@RajdeepKarmakar]

Hi, in terms of cost, what is the key selling point of this offering when an established CI/CD process is already implemented in an enterprise?

[@TheMomander]

Cloud Workstations help you give your developers a standardized dev environment. Workstations will hopefully save you money by reducing downtime for developers as they don't have to tinker with their local environments. These savings grow if you are onboarding new developers or contractors. You can also manage security of dev environments in one place instead of hoping that each developer does it correctly. You would also want a well-running CI/CD process, whether you use Cloud Workstations or not. I hope I answered your questions, but I'm not sure. Feel free to post any follow-up questions!

[@RajdeepKarmakar]

@@TheMomander Hi, thank you for the feedback. Couple of follow up questions>> 1) Can Cloud Workstations be pre-packaged with IDEs (like VS, Eclipse or IntelliJ)? 2) How do we pre-package software in Cloud Workstations for licensed vendor products?

[@TheMomander]

@@RajdeepKarmakar Yes, it's possible to include IDEs in your workstation images. About licensing, it really depends on exactly how the licensing works and what the license agreement with the vendor says. It's probably best to ask the vendor you bought the license from. Others may have asked them about this already, now that cloud-based development is becoming more common.

[@RajdeepKarmakar]

@@TheMomander Thank you!

[@mc9304]

Two questions: 1. Do you need to deploy your own GKE cluster 2. Could a web browser be integrated into the container to run “in the web browser” Thx

[@TheMomander]

1. No need to have your own GKE cluster. Everything can be set up within the Cloud Workstation product. 2. I don't believe that is possible yet.

[@kdurgiya]

Wow, so taking serverless to a new definition - coding serverlessly, eh ? 😁 Sounds exciting, though could it be an overkill (is one of the main usecase just to get around that initial developer onboarding simplified - so as to save around initial few hours/days of onboarding of a new developer to a team) ?

[@TheMomander]

As I see it, Cloud Workstations help with two things. The first is developer onboarding, just like you mentioned. The second is maintenance of your dev environments. You can update the common container, to make sure that all developers always have the latest security fixes and always use the same versions of important libraries. This prevents different developers' workstations drifting apart over time.

[@flarierza33]

I assume we can connect to github from these serverless workstations.

[@TheMomander]

Yes, you can connect with Github from these workstations. Do a search for "Version control with Cloud Workstations" and you will find the official doc that goes into more detail on how to set it up and what your options are. Best of luck!

[@hubstrangers3450]

7 years backwards, should be available being available with the inception of google shell......should be cost effective too, all these cloud scenario are very expensive for no valid reason...

[@Mrslykid1992]

The question is can this run for 500000 usecase? What is the cost per session? Also if we need low latency for real time input, like trading or portfolio management. How does this perform?

[@JaysonBH-g]

You can place the location of the workstation cluster in a Google Cloud Region that's close to you, or in your case, closer to the portfolio's datacenter. It's very performant especially as you can control how large you want your Compute to be (vCPUs, memory, & local storage), just like you would a traditional VM.

[@TheMomander]

You mentioned trading and portfolio management. Maybe your users are traders (who use applications) rather than developers (who build applications that others use)? Cloud Workstations are aimed at developers.