Do I need to set up an account and payment information for each provider I intend to use with libcloud? Are there any service offerings that allow you to sign up for payment once through them and interact with all libcloud listed providers easily?
Yes, you do. libcloud only offers an organized mechanism to interact with the public APIs of various cloud providers - it isn't a business of its own.
I've never heard of any company that lets you manage accounts across cloud service providers like you describe, other than reselling (like Heroku being built on AWS). You'll need to decide on what's valuable to you in a provider and do some research to see which one is the best fit for your needs!
Related
I am using a Google Cloud Project to automate the creation of some users inside of our organization. I have been using some API's that are hosted using the Google Cloud and have had no problem authenticating and using the API's, however I am not sure if I should be using a service account for this. I am currently using the Google Drive API, the Google Admin SDK(Directory API), the Sheets API, and the Docs API to create some accounts and manage an error log.
What I am asking is, should I be creating a service account to use the API's or is my own personal Google Workspace account okay for creating these? Is there a site/video/something that can guide me in the right direction if I do need to create a service account. I personally would rather have all of the automation using a service account for authentication, but the only videos and tutorials I found on using the service accounts are trying to use resources pertaining to Cloud Computing and service accounts that are impersonating other service accounts.
Using a Service Account is the best course of action for security reasons when you are the one giving authorization and authentication to your organization.
It is identical to granting access to any other identity to allow a service account access to a resource. For instance, suppose you only want an application that runs on Compute Engine to be able to generate items in Cloud Storage.
As a result, instead of managing each and every one of your users, you may limit and manage service accounts, assign certain roles to specific users or groups, and keep track of them because several service accounts can be created in a project.
Since you use Google Workspaces, I also advise you to read the shared documentation posted in the comments by #John Hanley.
I am trying to publish my Android app to our company's Play Store.
On Google API access page
I am trying to create new service account. It does not work.
You are missing at least one of the following required permissions:
Project
orgpolicy.policy.get resourcemanager.projects.get Check that the
folder, organization, and project IDs are valid and you have
permissions to access them
My GCP shows myname#github.com google account.
On the other side,Google API(Google Play Console) shows MYCOMPNAY Team account.
How to solve this IAM problem?
I'll do my best to answer but the question lacks some detail.
As the error describes, service accounts are a distinct type of credential used by Google that are intended to be used by software (rather than humans) for interacting with Google services. It makes some sense (though I'm unfamiliar with the Play process) that you'd need to use service accounts rather than human accounts with this service.
Unlike, regular (human) accounts (e.g. yourname#github.com), service accounts are owned by Google projects. When you create a service account, you'll need to scope the account to an existing Google project.
Google provides various Consoles for different services. I'm most familiar with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and so I would create projects and service accounts using GCP's CLI (Cloud SDK aka gcloud) or https://console.cloud.google.com. Are you using something similar?
Unfortunately, I think, Google's tools scope projects (even though these are universal Google resources) to specific platforms (Cloud, Firebase, Apps etc.) and so you may not be able to see all your projects via the e.g. Cloud Console.
So....
If you have a Play (!?) Console, there should be a mechanism to list|create projects. If you haven't already, created a project to own your service account. Then the tool should provide a mechanism to create a service account. Do so under that projects. Lastly, you'll need to grant the service account permissions so that it can do what you need it to do (e.g. publish your app).
If you add more details to your question, I may be able to help.
NOTE One distinction between human (e.g. yourname#github.com as a Google account) and a service account is that human accounts using 3-legged OAuth while service accounts use 2-legged OAuth. This is because the service account is not able to interact with OAuth prompts as a human user would and it is often a good "tell" when you need to use a human vs. a service account.
See:
Google Play: (API) Projects and Service Accounts
Understanding Service Accounts
Using OAuth for Server-to-Server apps
Migrating on-premise services and applications to Google Cloud Platform and during an extended transition will be in a blended GCP, on-Prem, third party service provided platform. Looking to standardize on GCP OAuth2 provider with the OpenIdentity provider as single source of authentication and verification.
I have poured over the documentation provided by Google Identity Platform and I see Authorization As a Service which appears to be based on Firebase and is close to what I need/want but not exactly.
The Open Identity provider has an SDK and can be integrated with Web, Server, and mobile device applications. Good!
What I am looking to confirm is that I can also use the OAuth2 SDK to authenticate a user with a token, and then use that token with the OpenIdentity APIs to control user access and features. I know this is entirely possible for the GCP native applications.
Presently it looks like using SAML to integrate with another OAuth2 platform within the Identity Product and then enabling the OpenIdentity provider will meet "most" of my needs. What would be missing would be standardizing on the Google Identity Platform before we migrate all our products and services onto GCP.
The burning question, can I use the OAuth2 implementation with services and apps not hosted on GCP?
The documentation seems to suggest to me yes and no simultaneously.
Any help appreciated at his point.
See Hanley's response above. I had read the documentation available for several identity related products for Google Cloud Platform.
My question made sense to me but it does not translate to those who actually understand the the Identity Platform itself, and even say just one (1) of the integration implementation methods. Reading through the developer docs I caught upon a really important piece of perspective that answered nearly all of my questions.
In case it is helpful:
- Google Sign-in uses #gmail.com (or others) google identities which applications or organizations can leverage
- One can configure, create, import domain user identities using the Google Admin console
- These are both considered domain entities and one can configure single sign-on (OAuth, SAML, 509x, JWT, OICD) for these by using providers, or writing custom providers
- Either permits organizations and projects to utilize IAM and other Security-Identity features within GCP out of the box with minimal overhead
This covers about 90% of my initial use case and once I understood that domain user identities are either Google, or your own private domain identities created through the Admin Console through Group and User management, the remaining 10% was easy enough to solve.
I'm going to stop commenting here as this was key in understanding why things did not make sense, and why Mr. Hanley (thank you for your patience) was unable to answer my question at the beginning.
Hoping this helps someone else.
One thing I dislike about Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is its less baked-in security model around roles/service accounts.
Running locally on my laptop, I need to use the service account's key specified in a JSON file. In AWS, I can just assume a role I have been granted access to assume (without needing to carry around a private key). Is there an analogue to this with GCP?
I am going to try and answer this. I have the AWS Security Specialty (8 AWS certifications) and I know AWS very well. I have been investing a lot of time this year mastering Google Cloud with a focus on authorization and security. I am also an MVP Security for Alibaba Cloud.
AWS has a focus on security and security features that I both admire and appreciate. However, unless you really spend the time to understand all the little details, it is easy to implement poor/broken security in AWS. I can also say the same about Google security. Google has excellent security built into Google Cloud Platform. Google just does it differently and also requires a lot of time to understand all the little features / details.
In AWS, you cannot just assume a role. You need an AWS Access Key first or be authenticated via a service role. Then you can call STS to assume a role. Both AWS and Google make this easy with AWS Access Keys / Google Service Accounts. Whereas AWS uses roles, Google uses roles/scopes. The end result is good in either platform.
Google authentication is based upon OAuth 2.0. AWS authentication is based upon Access Key / Secret Key. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. Both can be either easy to implement (if you understand them well) or a pain to get correct.
The major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Alibaba, Google, IBM) are moving very fast with a constant stream of new features and services. Each one has strengths and weaknesses. Today, there is no platform that offers all the features of the others. AWS today is ahead both in features and market share. Google has a vast number of services that outnumber AWS and I don't know why this is overlooked. The other platforms are catching up quickly and today, you can implement enterprise class solutions and security with any of the cloud platforms.
Today, we would not choose only Microsoft or only Open Source for our application and server infrastructure. In 2019, we will not be chosing only AWS or only Google, etc. for our cloud infrastructure. We will mix and match the best services from each platform for our needs.
As described in the Getting Started with Authentication [1] page, for service accounts it is needed the key file in order to authenticate.
From [2]: You can authenticate to a Google Cloud Platform (GCP) API using service accounts or user accounts, and for APIs that don't require authentication, you can use API keys.
Service and user accounts needs the key file to authenticate. Taking this information into account, there is no manner to locally authenticate without using a key file.
Links:
[1] https://cloud.google.com/docs/authentication/getting-started
[2] https://cloud.google.com/docs/authentication/
For local development (including other team members) should we be using application default credentials for our apps, or service accounts when authenticating and using Google Cloud Platform services?
I was thinking that being able to control the individual user permissions instead of a random service account would be better, as it also prevents us from having to revoke the whole service account key if someone leaves the team. Whereas if we used ADC, it would just work as we'd disable their account and remove its permissions. However, the documentation in the Authentication overview contains this note:
Important: For almost all cases, whether you are developing locally or
in a production application, you should use service accounts, rather
than user accounts or API keys.
What is the correct authentication method to use for local development?
From the same page:
All GCP APIs support service accounts. For most server applications that need to communicate with GCP APIs, we recommend using service accounts, as they are the most widely-supported and flexible way to authenticate.
In this sense, the randomness of the service account is determined only on your way of managing it.
For your scenario, when someone leaves the team, it would indeed be easier to revoke the user account('s permissions), instead of revoking the key, affecting all using it. In my opinion, both ways are correct and the best way would be the one that best suits your context. The documentation pushes for service accounts as it is a Google account, as opposed to a specific user, and it can be used for authentication regardless of where your code runs.