I've setup a Stackdriver account today. My colleagues [Editors on the monitored project], when navigating to [0], were prompted to create a new Stackdriver account. They could not see the one I just created, nor were they presented with the GCP project we are using. There was no obvious way to invite them to join the project, more generally there was no obvious way to manage user accounts, though I could see and edit my Profile, which does show [readonly] that I'm an "Admin", though I don't know how to make other people "Admin", or what other roles are available. It was not obvious to check which project "hosts" the Stackdriver account. There was no obvious link to a forum or chat to discuss the issue, only a "Send Feedback" link who-knows-when somebody will look at.

We eventually solved the issue by passing around [1], which is not obviously displayed anywhere. I scrapped it by right clicking and <Copy Link Address> somewhere in the UI [I forgot where].

I'm bullish on Google Cloud [founder on GCE & long departed, hi there guys], so I put a solid 30 minutes of sleuthing in it, but someone less determined would have gave up a whole lot sooner.

[0] https://app.google.stackdriver.com

[1] https://app.google.stackdriver.com/account/login/<project-id...

I'll bite and point out that Stackdriver Monitoring is just really really slow to render most pages even for tiny test projects that only generate small amounts of data. I'm sure you guys are aware of it, but the slowness is kind of at the point of being a usability issue. I guess I'll also add that it'd be nice to be able to plot multiple metrics in the same chart.

I wish that stackdriver documentation would be more clear that you should go for sending logs through fluentd, or you are going to have bad time.

I have been using python wrapper over the stackdriver http api. To fix a few frustrations I had with it, like big logs crashing the logger or lack of identificaiton of machine that sent the log (so you can't follow single flow of execution) I wrote the https://github.com/understandwork/stackdriver_python_logger . Then, some time later I realised that I have to use fluentd anyway.

Stackdriver is an incredibly poorly designed, communicated, and implemented piece of software. It's not clear what it's good at or what you're supposed to use it for.

Random, completely noncontrived example:

  1. Oh, GCP wants me to use stackdriver for logging.
  2. Okay, I will click stackdriver.
  3. I have to reauth and am taken to another website with completely different UI than GCP.
  4. I click into logs.
  5. I am taken BACK to GCP, with some "stackdriver" branded logs experience.
  6. Exporting, slicing, or otherwise doing anything with these logs is pretty much a nightmare.

that said the rest of GCP is pretty good, but its clear that certain parts of it have been given very little design thought, comparatively