/terraform-gcp

Terraform and GCP: Automating a compute instance

Primary LanguageHCL

Automating a GCP VM with Terraform

Requirements

  1. Google Cloud Platform(GCP) Project
  2. GCP service account private key
  3. Google Compute Engine
  4. Terraform (for automating resource creation)

A GCP project can have up to five VPC networks, and each Compute Engine instance belongs to one VPC network. If interested in the Terraform GCP provider docs or more generally about Terraform resources read here.

Terraform Installation

  1. Copy link address for Terraform download
  $ wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/0.12.16/terraform_0.12.16_darwin_amd64.zip
  $ unzip terraform_0.12.16_darwin_amd64.zip
  $ mv terraform Downloads/
  $ vim ~/.profile
  Add `export PATH="$PATH:~/Downloads"` to ~/.profile
  1. Verify installation: $ terraform or $ terraform --version
  2. $ mkdir -p ~/terraform/vpc

Google Cloud Platform

  1. Create project from GCP console
  2. From the GCP main menu ☰ > Enable the Compute Engine API
  3. Navigate to Credentials from the left panel and select Create Credentials > choose Service account key from the dropdown > New service account:
    • Choose a name and set role to Editor
    • JSON > Create
    • Now the private key will download to your local machine.
  4. Install the gcloud CLI. For Linux/Mac:
  $ curl https://sdk.cloud.google.com | bash
  $ exec -l $SHELL
  $ gcloud init

  1. From ~/terraform/vpc, create a Terraform config file, main.tf, with the following configuration:

    • Note: You will need to edit the values of the following argument names (credentials, project)
  provider "google" {
    credentials = file("<FILE_PATH>.json")         

    project = "<PROJECT_ID>"              
    region  = "us-west1"
    zone    = "us-west1-a"
  }

  resource "google_compute_network" "vpc_network" {
    name = "terraform-network"
  }

  resource "google_compute_instance" "vm_instance" {
    name         = "terraform-instance1"
    machine_type = "f1-micro"

    boot_disk {
      initialize_params {
        image = "debian-cloud/debian-9"
      }
    }

    network_interface {
      network       = "default"
      access_config {
      }
    }
  }
  1. $ terraform init
    • You should now see Terraform has been successfully initialized!
  2. $ terraform apply and enter 'yes' to continue.
    • You should now see Apply complete! Resources: 2 added, 0 changed, 0 destroyed.
    • From the GCP console you can see your newly created VM instance, substituting <PROJECT_ID>: https://console.cloud.google.com/compute/instances?project=<PROJECT_ID>