Skip to content

Building Infrastructure in terraform

Picking your region

First we need to set which cloud provider we will be using. In this example we will be using GCP

Start with defining the cloud providor and then the version. Usually this is not needed!

From Google cloud console, you will need to get the project ID. This can be found on the dashboard of the project.

Then we will need to define the region and zone. Today I will be using us-central1 and then the zone of c

This becomes us-central1-c in the format of --

Below is a list of regions and zones. If you are scaling and need low latency, use the same zone as they are physically closer! (wow)

Regions and Zones

Region

Zones

Location

asia-east1

a, b, c

Changhua County, Taiwan

asia-east2

a, b, c

Hong Kong

asia-northeast1

a, b, c

Tokyo, Japan

asia-northeast2

a, b, c

Osaka, Japan

asia-northeast3

a, b, c

Seoul, South Korea

asia-south1

a, b, c

Mumbai, India

asia-southeast1

a, b, c

Jurong West, Singapore

australia-southeast1

a, b, c

Sydney, Australia

europe-north1

a, b, c

Hamina, Finland

europe-west1

b, c, d

St. Ghislain, Belgium

europe-west2

a, b, c

London, England, UK

europe-west3

a, b, c

Frankfurt, Germany

europe-west4

a, b, c

Eemshaven, Netherlands

europe-west6

a, b, c

Zürich, Switzerland

northamerica-northeast1

a, b, c

Montréal, Québec, Canada

southamerica-east1

a, b, c

Osasco (São Paulo), Brazil

us-central1

a, b, c, f

Council Bluffs, Iowa, USA

us-east1

b, c, d

Moncks Corner, South Carolina, USA

us-east4

a, b, c

Ashburn, Northern Virginia, USA

us-west1

a, b, c

The Dalles, Oregon, USA

us-west2

a, b, c

Los Angeles, California, USA

us-west3

a, b, c

Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

Networking

Next we will be creating a network in the us-central1-c zone called google_compute_network.vpc_network and giving it a name of terraform-network

For this, we will define a resource. 

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

Depending on the need, you can assign the vm's a static ip by defining another resource, this time calling it by the google_compute_address

resource "google_compute_address" "vm_static_ip" {
    name = "terraform-static-ip"
}

Creating the Instance

As always, when creating something in terraform, we need to define it as a resource. In this case we will use the google_compute_instance.vm_instance which tells google, bro, spin me up a vm

Just like everything else, we need to give it a name. This not only helps with admin tasks, but we can call it by name for later tasks! 

Then we need to pick what machine type to use! I am going to be using these found here

We can add tags. This is useful for sorting machines by production, pre deployment and dev. 

Next thing we will need to do is add the boot disk. We can do this by creating a boot_disk

In here we define the type of disk we want. Here we have gone for a container optimized server

boot_disk {
        initialize_params{
            image = "cos-cloud/cos-stable"
        }
    }
More networking

Finally, we add the IP address and allow nat:

network_interface {
    network = google_compute_network.vpc_network.name
        access_config {
            nat_ip = google_compute_address.vm_static_ip.address
        }
    }

provisioner is a tool we can use to get details of the vm we created. Here we will get the public ip address and print it to a file in the folder we are in

provisioner "local-exec" {
        command = "echo ${google_compute_instance.vm_instance.name}:${google_compute_instance.vm_instance.network_interface[0].access_config[0].nat_ip} >> ip_address.txt"
    }



provider "google" {
  version = "3.5.0"
  credentials = file("terraform-c8b2b88693d4.json")

project = "absolute-access-271419"
region  = "us-central1"
zone    = "us-central1-c"
}
resource "google_compute_network" "vpc_network"{
name = "terraform-network"
}

resource "google_compute_address" "vm_static_ip" {
name = "terraform-static-ip"

}
resource "google_compute_instance" "vm_instance" {
name    = "terraform-instance"
machine_type = "f1-micro"
tags    = ["test","firsttry"]
provisioner "local-exec" {
command = "echo ${google_compute_instance.vm_instance.name}:${google_compute_instance.vm_instance.network_interface[0].access_config[0].nat_ip} >> ip_address.txt"
}
boot_disk {
initialize_params{
image = "cos-cloud/cos-stable"
}
}

network_interface {
network = google_compute_network.vpc_network.name
access_config {
nat_ip = google_compute_address.vm_static_ip.address
}
}
}
Want to make this site better? Open a PR or help fund hosting costs