Runtime Configurator

The Google Cloud Deployment Manager service offers a wide range of features centered around deploying and managing services on Google Cloud. As part of this, Google has released the Deployment Manager Runtime Configurator, which allows developers to provide configuration values to running applications in the form of hierarchically structured key-value pairs, similar to the Compute Engine metadata server.

At the time of writing this book, the Runtime Configurator is in public beta. Developers may choose to use this service over the Compute Engine metadata server as it provides a consistent way to store and retrieve values across Google Cloud services, and can be tightly integrated into the build and release process when using the Google Cloud Deployment Manager. There are a number of client libraries for interacting with the Runtime Configurator, and clients are able to consume configuration values directly, or through the use of watchers and waiters, which provide a more event-driven approach for handling configuration changes. We'll revisit this topic in Chapter 12, Change Management.