Google Cloud announces VM Manager, a suite of tools to automate infrastructure management

As enterprises become more reliant on cloud-native tools, Google’s Compute Engine has become a popular choice for helping to maintain those online resources at large scales. Now Google Cloud is rolling out a new suite of infrastructure management tools to automate and simplify that work.

Dubbed VM Manager, the new toolset will include a single dashboard designed to offer greater visibility into computing projects while enabling better tracking of data. In a blog post by Google Cloud product manager Ravi Kiran Chintalapudi and product marketing manager Senanu Aggor, the company said the new service would bring greater ease and security to managing virtual machine fleets.

“Enterprises are accelerating their digital transformation — moving more and more workloads to the cloud,” they wrote. “Customers tell us they need simplified cloud-native tools to operate and manage their cloud resources, similar to their familiar on-premises infrastructure management tools.”

The goal is to reduce the time teams have to spend monitoring compute infrastructure to free them to focus more on business issues.

Among the automated features included will be patch management to make sure all systems are updated to limit vulnerabilities; configuration management to validate that settings are consistent to limit errors and security issues; and better inventory management so enterprises have more real-time insight into their data.