How to Deploy an Ubuntu Linux VM Instance in GCP using Terraform

In this story, we will learn how to deploy an Ubuntu Linux VM Instance (VM) in GCP (Google Cloud Platform) using Terraform.

Prerequisite: GCP Credentials

Before creating our GCP VM Instances, we will need GCP Credentials to execute our Terraform code.

Please refer to the “How to Create a Service Account for Terraform in GCP (Google Cloud Platform)” story if you need help to create the credentials.

Note: Using private key .JSON files are great for learning and testing however they are not recommended in production environments. Never push private keys files to code repositories.

Creating a Terraform file for GCP Authentication

First, we create a file called provider-variables.tf, used by the GCP authentication variables, and add the following code to the file.

We will need a GCP Project Name, a GCP Region, and a .JSON file name with the private keys to authenticate to GCP.

# GCP authentication file
variable "gcp_auth_file" {
  type        = string
  description = "GCP authentication file"
}
# define GCP region
variable "gcp_region" {
  type        = string
  description = "GCP region"
}
# define GCP project name
variable "gcp_project" {
  type        = string
  description = "GCP project name"
}

Then we create the “provider-main.tf” file and add the following code:

The version in the “required_providers” / “google” section is useful to pin a specific version but is not required.

# Define Terraform provider
terraform {
  required_version = "~> 1.0"
  required_providers {
    google = {
      source = "hashicorp/google"
      version = "4.11.0" # pinning version
    }
  }
}
# Define GCP provider
provider "google" {
  credentials = file(var.gcp_auth_file)
  project     = var.gcp_project
  region      = var.gcp_region
  zone        = var.gcp_zone
}

Finally, we use Provider in the “terraform.tfvars” file:

# GCP Settings
gcp_project   = "kopicloud-medium"
gcp_region…