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- Cloud

Using Terraform to Auto Scale and Load Balance Compute Engine Instances in GCP
Learning how to configure complex environments with Terraform is a must-have skill. In this hands-on lab, we will provision an autoscaling group with a load balancer.

Lab Info
Table of Contents
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Challenge
Create a Service Account
- From Google Cloud console's main navigation, choose IAM & Admin > Service Accounts.
- Click Create service account.
- Give your service account a name.
- Click Create.
- In the roles dropdown, select Project > Owner.
- Click Continue and then Done.
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Challenge
Log in to the Host Instance and Ensure Terraform Is Installed
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From Google Cloud navigation, choose Compute Engine > VM instances.
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Click SSH next to
terraform-instance
. -
Use
root
privileges:sudo -i
-
Change into the
root
directory:cd /
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Input the path to communicate with Terraform into the
/etc/profile
file:echo "PATH='$PATH:/downloads/'" >> /etc/profile
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Run the following in order to be able to call Terraform:
source /etc/profile
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Call Terraform:
terraform
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Challenge
Create a Service Account Key within the Instance
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Allow the SDK to communicate with GCP:
gcloud auth login
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Enter
Y
at the prompt. -
Click on the link in the output.
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Select the Cloud Student account.
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Click Allow.
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Copy the code provided.
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Paste the code into the terminal.
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Create the service account key:
gcloud iam service-accounts keys create /downloads/auto-scaling.json --iam-account <SERVICE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL>
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Challenge
Create and Deploy the Configuration File
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Create a
main.tf
file:vim main.tf
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Paste in the following, replacing all instances of
<PROJECT_NAME>
with your project name, which can be found in the top navigation bar of the Google Cloud console:provider "google" { version = "3.20.0" credentials = file("/downloads/auto-scaling.json") project = "<PROJECT_NAME>" region = "us-central1" zone = "us-central1-c" } resource "google_compute_network" "vpc_network" { name = "new-terraform-network" } resource "google_compute_autoscaler" "foobar" { name = "my-autoscaler" project = "<PROJECT_NAME>" zone = "us-central1-c" target = google_compute_instance_group_manager.foobar.self_link autoscaling_policy { max_replicas = 5 min_replicas = 2 cooldown_period = 60 cpu_utilization { target = 0.5 } } } resource "google_compute_instance_template" "foobar" { name = "my-instance-template" machine_type = "n1-standard-1" can_ip_forward = false project = "<PROJECT_NAME>" tags = ["foo", "bar", "allow-lb-service"] disk { source_image = data.google_compute_image.centos_9.self_link } network_interface { network = google_compute_network.vpc_network.name } metadata = { foo = "bar" } service_account { scopes = ["userinfo-email", "compute-ro", "storage-ro"] } } resource "google_compute_target_pool" "foobar" { name = "my-target-pool" project = "<PROJECT_NAME>" region = "us-central1" } resource "google_compute_instance_group_manager" "foobar" { name = "my-igm" zone = "us-central1-c" project = "<PROJECT_NAME>" version { instance_template = google_compute_instance_template.foobar.self_link name = "primary" } target_pools = [google_compute_target_pool.foobar.self_link] base_instance_name = "terraform" } data "google_compute_image" "centos_9" { family = "centos-stream-9" project = "centos-cloud" } module "lb" { source = "GoogleCloudPlatform/lb/google" version = "2.2.0" region = "us-central1" name = "load-balancer" service_port = 80 target_tags = ["my-target-pool"] network = google_compute_network.vpc_network.name }
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About the author
Real skill practice before real-world application
Hands-on Labs are real environments created by industry experts to help you learn. These environments help you gain knowledge and experience, practice without compromising your system, test without risk, destroy without fear, and let you learn from your mistakes. Hands-on Labs: practice your skills before delivering in the real world.
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