Quickstart: Create a VM instance using Terraform

In this quickstart, you learn how to use Terraform to create a Compute Engine Virtual Machine (VM) instance and connect to that VM instance.

Hashicorp Terraform is an Infrastructure as code (IaC) tool that lets you provision and manage cloud infrastructure. Terraform provider for Google Cloud (Google Cloud provider) lets you provision and manage Google Cloud infrastructure.

Before you begin

To use an online terminal with the gcloud CLI and Terraform already set up, activate Cloud Shell:

At the bottom of this page, a Cloud Shell session starts and displays a command-line prompt. It can take a few seconds for the session to initialize.
Create or select a Google Cloud project.

Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.
- Create a Google Cloud project:
```
gcloud projects create PROJECT_ID
```
  Replace PROJECT_ID with a name for the Google Cloud project you are creating.
- Select the Google Cloud project that you created:
```
gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID
```
  Replace PROJECT_ID with your Google Cloud project name.
Make sure that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.
Enable the Compute Engine API:
```
gcloud services enable compute.googleapis.com
```
Grant roles to your user account. Run the following command once for each of the following IAM roles: roles/compute.instanceAdmin.v1
```
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding PROJECT_ID --member="user:USER_IDENTIFIER" --role=ROLE
```
- Replace PROJECT_ID with your project ID.
- Replace USER_IDENTIFIER with the identifier for your user account. For examples, see Represent workforce pool users in IAM policies.
- Replace ROLE with each individual role.

Prepare the environment

Clone the GitHub repository containing Terraform samples:

git clone https://github.com/terraform-google-modules/terraform-docs-samples.git --single-branch

Go to the directory that contains the quickstart sample:

cd terraform-docs-samples/compute/quickstart/create_vm

Review the Terraform files

Review the main.tf file. This file defines the Google Cloud resources that you want to create.

cat main.tf

The output is similar to the following

resource "google_compute_instance" "default" {
  name         = "my-vm"
  machine_type = "n1-standard-1"
  zone         = "us-central1-a"

  boot_disk {
    initialize_params {
      image = "ubuntu-minimal-2210-kinetic-amd64-v20230126"
    }
  }

  network_interface {
    network = "default"
    access_config {}
  }
}

This file describes the google_compute_instance resource, which is the Terraform resource for the Compute Engine VM instance. google_compute_instance is configured to have the following properties:

name is set to my-vm.
machine_type is set to n1-standard-1.
zone is set to us-central1-a.
boot_disk sets the boot disk for the instance.
network_interface is set to use the default network in your Google Cloud project.

Create the Compute Engine VM instance

In Cloud Shell, run the following command to verify that Terraform is available:

terraform

The output should be similar to the following:


Usage: terraform [global options] <subcommand> [args]

The available commands for execution are listed below.
The primary workflow commands are given first, followed by
less common or more advanced commands.

Main commands:
  init          Prepare your working directory for other commands
  validate      Check whether the configuration is valid
  plan          Show changes required by the current configuration
  apply         Create or update infrastructure
  destroy       Destroy previously-created infrastructure

Initialize Terraform by running the following command. This command prepares your workspace so Terraform can apply your configuration.

terraform init

The output should be similar to the following:


Initializing the backend...

Initializing provider plugins...
- Finding latest version of hashicorp/google...
- Installing hashicorp/google v5.35.0...
- Installed hashicorp/google v5.35.0 (signed by HashiCorp)

Terraform has created a lock file .terraform.lock.hcl to record the provider
selections it made above. Include this file in your version control repository
so that Terraform can guarantee to make the same selections by default when
you run "terraform init" in the future.

Terraform has been successfully initialized!

Validate the Terraform configuration by running the following command. This command takes the following actions:
- Verifies that the syntax of main.tf is correct.
- Shows a preview of the resources that will be created.
```
terraform plan
```
The output should be similar to the following:
```
Plan: 1 to add, 0 to change, 0 to destroy.

Note: You didn't use the -out option to save this plan, so Terraform can't
guarantee to take exactly these actions if you run "terraform apply" now.
```
Apply the configuration to provision resources described in the main.tf file:
```
terraform apply
```
When prompted, enter yes.

Terraform calls Google Cloud APIs to create the VM instance defined in the main.tf file.

The output should be similar to the following:
```
Apply complete! Resources: 1 added, 0 changed, 0 destroyed
```

Connect to the VM instance

Connect to the VM instance you just created by running the following command:

gcloud compute ssh --zone=us-central1-a my-vm

Clean up

To avoid incurring charges to your Google Cloud account for the resources used on this page, delete the Google Cloud project with the resources.

In Cloud Shell, run the following command to delete the Terraform resources:

terraform destroy

When prompted, enter yes.

The output should be similar to the following:

Destroy complete! Resources: 1 destroyed.

What's next

Learn how to deploy a basic Flask web server using Terraform.
Learn how to store Terraform state in a Cloud Storage bucket.