/gke-basics

GKE Infrastructure as Code

GKE resources, including clusters and Kubernetes objects, can be provisioned and managed using Terraform.

Terraform

Terraform uses two main providers for GKE:

• The Google Cloud provider connects to the Google Cloud API to manage GKE cluster infrastructure using Terraform resources such as google_container_cluster for the cluster itself, and google_container_node_pool for nodes in Standard mode.
• The Kubernetes provider connects to the Kubernetes API to manage workloads inside the cluster using Kubernetes resources such as Deployments and Services.

GKE Autopilot Cluster Example

resource "google_container_cluster" "primary" {
  name     = "my-gke-cluster"
  location = "us-central1"

  enable_autopilot = true

  # Do NOT specify node configurations (like initial_node_count or node_config)
  # in Autopilot mode; doing so causes a Terraform provider error.

  # Deletion protection should be set to false for testing
  deletion_protection = false
}

Deploying a Workload Example (Kubernetes Provider)

resource "kubernetes_deployment_v1" "default" {
  metadata {
    name = "hello-app"
  }
  spec {
    replicas = 2
    selector {
      match_labels = {
        app = "hello-app"
      }
    }
    template {
      metadata {
        labels = {
          app = "hello-app"
        }
      }
      spec {
        container {
          image = "us-docker.pkg.dev/google-samples/containers/gke/hello-app:2.0"
          name  = "hello-app"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Reference Documentation

• Terraform Google Provider - Container Cluster

• Terraform Google Provider - Kubernetes Provider

YAML Samples

GKE cluster configurations and Kubernetes manifests can also be defined using YAML for use with kubectl apply or Deployment Manager.

• GKE YAML Samples