Advanced agent setup

This document describes advanced setup options for Transfer service for on-premises data, including:

• Copying data on CIFS or SMB volumes
• Using service account credentials
• Adjusting maximum agent memory
• Restricting agent directory access
• Coordinating agents with Kubernetes
• Using a Forward Proxy

Copying data on CIFS or SMB volumes

Transfer for on-premises agents aren't directly supported on Windows servers. However, you can move data stored on any POSIX-compliant file system by mounting it on a Linux server or virtual machine (VM), and then running an agent from the Linux server or VM to copy your data to Cloud Storage.

To move data from a CIFS or SMB volume:

1. Provision a Linux server or VM.

   For supported operating systems, see Prerequisites.

2. Run the following command on the Linux server or VM you provisioned to mount the volume:

   sudo mount -t cifs -o
   username=WINDOWS-SHARE-USER,password=WINDOWS-SHARE-PASSWORD //IP-ADDRESS/SHARE-NAME /mnt
   

   Replace the following:

   • IP-ADDRESS: the IP address of the Microsoft Windows server that the CIFS or SMB volume is located on.
   • SHARE-NAME: the share name you are mounting.
   • WINDOWS-SHARE-USER: an authorized user for accessing the CIFS or SMB volume.
   • WINDOWS-SHARE-PASSWORD: the password for the authorized user of the CIFS or SMB volume.

3. Confirm that the CIFS volume is mounted by running the following command:

   findmnt -l
   

4. Confirm that the user that will run the agent can list and copy files on the mounted volume by running the following commands:

   sudo -u USERNAME cp /mnt/FILE1 /mnt/FILE2
   

   Replace the following:

   • USERNAME: the user that will run the agent.
   • FILE1: the file to copying from.
   • FILE2: filename to copy to.

5. Install the Transfer for on-premises agent.

Using service account credentials

You can use service account credentials to run the agent. Using service account credentials provides you a way to authenticate the transfer agent without relying on a single user account. For more information about account types, see Principals.

Before using service account credentials with your agents, ensure that Transfer service for on-premises data is ready by verifying that:

1. Setting up Transfer for on-premises.

2. A transfer job exists.

To use service account credentials with your agents:

1. Stop all agent containers

2. Create service account keys. For more information, see Creating and managing service account keys.

   Note: For quick setup, we recommend that you use either gcloud or Google Cloud console.

3. Start the agent Docker container by running the following command:

   sudo docker run --ulimit memlock=64000000 -d --rm -v /:/transfer_root \
   gcr.io/cloud-ingest/tsop-agent:latest \
   --enable-mount-directory \
   --project-id=PROJECT-ID \
   --creds-file=CREDENTIAL-FILE \
   --hostname=$(hostname) \
   --agent-id-prefix=ID-PREFIX
   

   Replace the following:

• PROJECT-ID: the project ID that is hosting the transfer and Pub/Sub resources are created and billed.
• CREDENTIAL-FILE: a JSON-formatted service account credential file. For more information about generating a service account credential file, see creating and managing service account keys.
• ID-PREFIX: the prefix that is prepended to the agent ID to help identify the agent or its machine in the Google Cloud Console. When a prefix is used, the agent ID is formatted as prefix + hostname + Docker container ID.

Adjusting maximum agent memory

Transfer service for on-premises data agents default to using a maximum of 8GiB of system memory. You can adjust the maximum memory used by the agents to fit your environment by passing --max-physical-mem=MAXIMUM-MEMORY, replacing MAXIMUM-MEMORY with a value that fits your environment.

The following are memory requirements for Transfer service for on-premises data agents:

• Minimum memory: 1GiB
• Minimum memory to support high-performance uploads: 6GiB

We recommend the default of 8GiB.

The following table describes examples of acceptable formats for MAXIMUM-MEMORY:

max-physical-memory value	Maximum memory setting
6g	6 gigabytes
6gb	6 gigabytes
6GiB	6 gibibytes

Restricting agent directory access

Important: Users that create a Transfer for on-premises job can choose any source directory that is accessible by the agent, regardless of the data access restrictions in place in your data center. To prevent unauthorized access to data, select users that are granted access to the transfer project and that are permitted to run the user agent in alignment with your organization's security and access policies.

To specify directories that the agent can access while performing a transfer, pass -v HOST-DIRECTORY:CONTAINER-DIRECTORY to the agent, where:

• HOST-DIRECTORY is the directory on the host machine that you intend to copy from.
• CONTAINER-DIRECTORY is the directory mapped within the agent container.

Note: The --enable-mount-directory will supersede the -v option, because it mounts the entire file system. Remove it to ensure your restrictions work as intended.

Important: HOST-DIRECTORY and CONTAINER-DIRECTORY must be the same so that the agent can locate files to copy.

You can use more than one -v flag to further specify directories to copy from. For example:

sudo docker run --ulimit memlock=64000000 -d -rm --volumes-from gcloud-config \
-v /usr/local/research:/usr/local/research \
-v /usr/local/billing:/usr/local/billing \
-v /tmp:/tmp \
gcr.io/cloud-ingest/tsop-agent:latest \
--project-id=PROJECT-ID \
--hostname=$(hostname) \
--agent-id-prefix=ID-PREFIX

If you are using a service account, ensure that you mount the credentials file into the container and pass the --creds-file=CREDENTIAL-FILE. For example:

sudo docker run --ulimit memlock=64000000 -d -rm \
-v HOST-DIRECTORY:CONTAINER-DIRECTORY \
-v /tmp:/tmp
-v FULL-CREDENTIAL-FILE-PATH:FULL-CREDENTIAL-FILE-PATH
gcr.io/cloud-ingest/tsop-agent:latest \
--project-id=PROJECT-ID \
--creds-file=CREDENTIAL-FILE \
--hostname=$(hostname) \
--agent-id-prefix=ID-PREFIX

Replace the following:

• HOST-DIRECTORY: the directory on the host machine that you intend to copy from.
• CONTAINER-DIRECTORY: the directory mapped within the agent container.
• FULL-CREDENTIAL-FILE-PATH: the fully-qualified path to the credentials file.
• PROJECT-ID: the project ID that is hosting the transfer and Pub/Sub resources are created and billed.
• CREDENTIAL-FILE: a JSON-formatted service account credential file. For more information about generating a service account credential file, see creating and managing service account keys.
• ID-PREFIX: the prefix that is prepended to the agent ID to help identify the agent or its machine in the Google Cloud Console. When a prefix is used, the agent ID is formatted as prefix + hostname + Docker container ID.

Coordinating agents with Kubernetes

Docker is a supported container runtime for Kubernetes. You can use Kubernetes to orchestrate starting and stopping many agents simultaneously. From Kubernetes perspective, the agent container is considered a stateless application, so you can follow Kubernetes instructions for deploying a stateless application.

Using private API endpoints in Cloud Interconnect

To use private API endpoints in Cloud Interconnect:

1. Log into the on-premises host that you intend to run the agent.

2. Configure Private Google Access. For more information, see Configuring Private Google Access for on-premises hosts.

3. Confirm that you can connect to Cloud Storage APIs and Pub/Sub APIs:

   1. For Cloud Storage APIs, run the following command from the same machine as the transfer agent to test moving a file into your Cloud Storage bucket: gsutil cp test.txt gs://MY-BUCKET where MY-BUCKET is the name of your Cloud Storage bucket. If the transfer works, the test is successful.
   2. For Pub/Sub APIs, run the following command from the same machine as the transfer agent to confirm that you can find existing Pub/Sub topics: gcloud pubsub topics list --project=PROJECT-ID where PROJECT-ID is the Google Cloud project name. If a list of Pub/Sub topics is displayed, the test is successful.

Using a forward proxy

Transfer service for on-premises data agents support using a forward proxy on your network by passing the HTTPS_PROXY environment variable.

For example:

sudo docker run -d --ulimit memlock=64000000 --rm \
--volumes-from gcloud-config \
-v /:/transfer_root \
--env HTTPS_PROXY=PROXY\
gcr.io/cloud-ingest/tsop-agent:latest \
--enable-mount-directory \
--project-id=PROJECT-ID \
--hostname=$(hostname) \
--agent-id-prefix=ID-PREFIX

Replace the following:

• PROXY: the HTTP URL and port of the proxy server. Ensure that you specify the HTTP URL, and not an HTTPS URL, to avoid double-wrapping requests in TLS encryption. Double-wrapped requests prevents the proxy server from sending valid outbound requests.
• PROJECT-ID: the project ID that is hosting the transfer and Pub/Sub resources are created and billed.
• ID-PREFIX: the prefix that is prepended to the agent ID to help identify the agent or its machine in the Google Cloud Console. When a prefix is used, the agent ID is formatted as prefix + hostname + Docker container ID.