Set up a Terraform project that enables the deployment of resources on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This project setup also a remote Terraform state file stored in a bucket created on GCP.

There are two main sections, the first one explain how to setup the necessary resources in GCP and the second one will for the terraform code and the deploy part.

Create a free account on GCP, take advantage of the free credit provided for a limited time. However, please note that after the trial period, you will be automatically charged. To avoid any unexpected charges, it's recommended to set up an alert from the first day of usage, so you will be notified when you exced the limit in your alarm.

Once you have your account, go to the GCP portal and create a new project:

• Select a Project / New Project / create

• Hamburger menu / IAM & Admin / Service Account / + Create Service Account
• Choose a name,

• Grant this service account access to project

  • in the menu "By product or service" scroll down and choose "Project" and give it the "Editor" role.
  

• Grant users access to this service account.

  Put the user email that you want to grant the permission to administer this service account.

  

• Done

  You've created the Service account, now you need to create your api key to allow connection.

• API Key creation

  Go to you service account / Keys / ADD KEYS / Create new key / JSON / Create

  It will download the key. Put in a file in your pc.
  

You need to enable some API, for that go to :

• Hamburger menu / APIs & Services / Enabled APIs & services / + ENABLE APIS & SERVICES

• On the search bar, search for this 3 API, and eanble them if not alredy anabled.

  • Cloud Storage
  • Compute Engie API
  • Cloud resource manager API
  

To Create a bucket in google cloud console go to:

• Hamburger menu / Cloud Storage / Buckets / + Create / Name your bucket (unique name) / Continue/ choose the option that you want / Create

• Go to your bucket and creata folder inside (tab Create Folder), name ir and create.

Congratulations, all the necessary setup in GCP is done, now will will continue with the Terraform code section.

The ojective of this tutorial is not to learn how to install terraform, but nevertheless you need to have terraform in your pc. You can fallow the steps in this link to install it if not already done.

Once you are in your favorite editor you will find two files "main.tf" and "vpc.tf".

• The "main.tf"

  In this file you will find the terraform code that allows to install the provider and connect to GCP, but for that you need to edit it.

  You need to edit the main.tf, put the correct path where you api is in your pc. In my case is this.

  credentials = file("C:/alba/.google/gcp-key.json")

  you need also to modify the project name, in my case is this.

  project = "terraform-project-88888"

  region and zone you can also change but as it is, it will work.

  For the backend block, you need to put your bucket name, in my case is "terraform-bucket-alba", the prefix is the folder name inside the bucket, in my case is "terraform-1". The credentials is the path to your API key, is the same as before.

  backend "gcs" {
      bucket = "terraform-bucket-alba"
      prefix = "terraform-1"
      credentials = "C:/Users/alba/.google/gcp-key.json"
    }
  

• The "vpc.tf"

  In this file is the code to deploy a google compute network resource in GCP you can find the documentation here. Don't need modifications.

Now you can deploy using terraform. Go to the terminal, go inside the folder with the terraform code, and run

terraform init

after that, run

terraform plan

you will see the resource to be created, at this time is only an overviw, no resources has been create yet.

terraform apply

you need to confirm mannually or otherwise you can run

terraform apply -auto-approve

and now the resources has been crete.

It is important to note that using the "-auto-approve" flag can be risky, as it bypasses the confirmation step and can result in unintended changes to the infrastructure. Therefore, it is recommended to use this flag with caution and only when you are certain that the changes are safe to apply.

You have deploy resources in GCP via terraform code (IaC), you can now go to the console and see the resources that has been created and also see the terraform.tfstate file in the folder inside the bucket.

This is the vpc that has been created

This is the terraform.tfstate file inside the bucket

If you want to destroy, the resources you can run

 terraform destroy

or

terraform destroy -auto-approve