GCP Thrifty Mod for Flowpipe

Pipelines to detect and correct misconfigurations leading to GCP savings opportunities.

Documentation

• Pipelines →

Getting Started

Requirements

Docker daemon must be installed and running. Please see Install Docker Engine for more information.

Installation

Download and install Flowpipe (https://flowpipe.io/downloads) and Steampipe (https://steampipe.io/downloads). Or use Brew:

brew install turbot/tap/flowpipe
brew install turbot/tap/steampipe

Install the GCP plugin with Steampipe:

steampipe plugin install gcp

Steampipe will automatically use your default GCP credentials. Optionally, you can setup multiple accounts or customize GCP credentials.

Create a connection_import resource to import your Steampipe GCP connections:

vi ~/.flowpipe/config/gcp.fpc

connection_import "gcp" {
  source      = "~/.steampipe/config/gcp.spc"
  connections = ["*"]
}

For more information on importing connections, please see Connection Import.

For more information on connections in Flowpipe, please see Managing Connections.

Install the mod:

mkdir gcp-thrifty
cd gcp-thrifty
flowpipe mod install github.com/turbot/flowpipe-mod-gcp-thrifty

Configure Variables

Several pipelines have input variables that can be configured to better match your environment and requirements.

Each variable has a default defined in its source file, e.g, logging/logging_buckets_with_higher_retention_period.fp (or variables.fp for more generic variables), but these can be overwritten in several ways:

The easiest approach is to setup your vars file, starting with the sample:

cp flowpipe.fpvars.example flowpipe.fpvars
vi flowpipe.fpvars

flowpipe pipeline run gcp_thrifty.pipeline.detect_and_correct_compute_disks_exceeding_max_size --var-file=flowpipe.fpvars

Alternatively, you can pass variables on the command line:

flowpipe pipeline run gcp_thrifty.pipeline.detect_and_correct_compute_disks_exceeding_max_size --var=compute_disks_exceeding_max_size=100

Or through environment variables:

export FP_VAR_compute_disks_exceeding_max_size=100
flowpipe pipeline run gcp_thrifty.pipeline.detect_and_correct_compute_disks_exceeding_max_size

For more information, please see Passing Input Variables

Running Detect and Correct Pipelines

To run your first detection, you'll need to ensure your Steampipe server is up and running:

steampipe service start

To find your desired detection, you can filter the pipeline list output:

flowpipe pipeline list | grep "detect_and_correct"

Then run your chosen pipeline:

flowpipe pipeline run gcp_thrifty.pipeline.detect_and_correct_compute_disks_exceeding_max_size

This will then run the pipeline and depending on your configured running mode; perform the relevant action(s), there are 3 running modes:

• Wizard
• Notify
• Automatic

Wizard

This is the default running mode, allowing for a hands-on approach to approving changes to resources by prompting for input for each detected resource.

Whilst the out of the box default is to run the workflow directly in the terminal. You can use Flowpipe server and external integrations to prompt in http, slack, teams, etc.

Notify

This mode as the name implies is used purely to report detections via notifications either directly to your terminal when running in client mode or via another configured notifier when running in server mode for each detected resource.

To run in notify mode, you will need to set the approvers variable to an empty list [] and ensure the resource-specific default_action variable is set to notify, either in your fpvars file

# example.fpvars
approvers = []
compute_disks_exceeding_max_size_default_action = "notify"

or pass the approvers and default_action arguments on the command-line.

flowpipe pipeline run gcp_thrifty.pipeline.detect_and_correct_compute_disks_exceeding_max_size --arg='default_action=notify' --arg='approvers=[]'

Automatic

This behavior allows for a hands-off approach to remediating resources.

To run in automatic mode, you will need to set the approvers variable to an empty list [] and the the resource-specific default_action variable to one of the available options.

# example.fpvars
approvers = []
compute_disks_exceeding_max_size_default_action = "snapshot_and_delete_disk"

or pass the approvers and default_action argument on the command-line.

flowpipe pipeline run gcp_thrifty.pipeline.detect_and_correct_compute_disks_exceeding_max_size --arg='approvers=[] --arg='default_action=snapshot_and_delete_disk'

To further enhance this approach, you can enable the pipelines corresponding query trigger to run completely hands-off.

Running Query Triggers

Note: Query triggers require Flowpipe running in server mode.

Each detect_and_correct pipeline comes with a corresponding Query Trigger, these are disabled by default allowing for you to enable and schedule them as desired.

Let's begin by looking at how to set-up a Query Trigger to automatically resolve our Compute disks that have exceeded the maximum allowed size.

Firsty, we need to update our example.fpvars file to add or update the following variables - if we want to run our remediation hourly and automatically apply the corrections:

# example.fpvars
compute_disks_exceeding_max_size_trigger_enabled  = true
compute_disks_exceeding_max_size_trigger_schedule = "1h"
compute_disks_exceeding_max_size_default_action   = "snapshot_and_delete_disk"

Now we'll need to start up our Flowpipe server:

flowpipe server --var-file=example.fpvars

This will activate every hour and detect Compute Snapshots exceeding maximum age and apply the corrections without further interaction!

Open Source & Contributing

This repository is published under the Apache 2.0 license. Please see our code of conduct. We look forward to collaborating with you!

Flowpipe and Steampipe are products produced from this open source software, exclusively by Turbot HQ, Inc. They are distributed under our commercial terms. Others are allowed to make their own distribution of the software, but cannot use any of the Turbot trademarks, cloud services, etc. You can learn more in our Open Source FAQ.

Get Involved

Join #flowpipe on Slack →

Want to help but don't know where to start? Pick up one of the help wanted issues:

• Flowpipe
• GCP Thrifty Mod