Terraform on GCP

HashiCorp Terraform is the most widely adopted multi-cloud Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool. On Google Cloud, Terraform uses the Google provider to manage GCP resources declaratively using HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL). This lesson covers how to use Terraform effectively on GCP, including provider configuration, resource management, state handling, and best practices.

---

Why Terraform on GCP?

While Cloud Deployment Manager is GCP-native, many teams choose Terraform for its broader ecosystem and multi-cloud capabilities:

Feature	Deployment Manager	Terraform
Language	YAML + Jinja2/Python	HCL
Cloud support	GCP only	Multi-cloud (GCP, AWS, Azure, etc.)
State	Managed by Google	Self-managed (local, GCS, Terraform Cloud)
Import	Not supported	Supported (terraform import)
Community	Small	Very large
Modules	Templates	Terraform Registry + custom modules
Drift detection	Limited	terraform plan shows drift

---

Getting Started

Provider Configuration

# main.tf
terraform {
  required_providers {
    google = {
      source  = "hashicorp/google"
      version = "~> 5.0"
    }
  }

  backend "gcs" {
    bucket = "my-terraform-state-bucket"
    prefix = "terraform/state"
  }
}