GCP K8S + Terraform Testproject

This is a test to automatically create a kubernetes cluster on google cloud platform via terraform.

Make this test run

In order to try it out yourself you first have to setup a project on gcp. You can create a free tier or use the free credits you get when creating an account for the first time. This project is focused on trying to be as cheap as possible :)

Download the clis

First you will need the terraform cli to run the scripts. Checkout the explanations from HashiCorp on how to set it up.

Also you need the gcloud and kubectl clis for accessing your cloud environment and the k8s cluster.

Get your Service Account Key

Go to your gcp project (or create one) and create an service account for this example. Generate a key from the service account in json format and save it in the /infa folder. It is expected to be named gcp-service-key.json.

Build and push the docker image

In order to have something to deploy, you can build and push the docker image in the /app folder into the gcr. It's just a basic application posting a message on localhost:3000 (and later in your k8s engine). Check out this explanation on how to build and push docker images into the gcr.

Make your GCR Repo public

To make it easier to pull the image you have to make the repository you pushed the app to public. Else terraform will not be able to pull the image from your repository. You can do this in the Configuration of the GCR on console.cloud.google.com

Fill out the variables

Last but not least you have to fill out the variables in infra/main.tf. Keep the Defaults but Type in everything that is surrounded with <>.

Run this Test

Start in the /infra directory and run

$ terraform plan

To verify if everything is set and working properly - usually here terraform will list what it is planning to do. Verify all changes.

Afterwards you can run

$ terraform apply

to start creating your environment. This can take some times (>5minutes). After some time you can already see on your cloud console that the k8s cluster is being created.

When everything is run successful you can verify your cluster, the services and your app already!

Check your app

You can find out your freshly created ip-address with your orchestrated app-container via

$ gcloud auth activate-service-account  --key-file gcp-service-key.json
$ gcloud container clusters get-credentials rotfuks-cluster --region us-central1 --project <PROJECT_ID>
$ kubectl get services

Then access the app with

http://${public-ip-from-the-service}:3000