Veilid Terraform GCP

Because GCP has a free tier, we can run a super tiny VM for free. And Veilid-Server is a super low resource consumer, so we can easily run a node to sustain and grow the network.

This terraform configuration will help you do that!

Cost

Because GCP doesn't (currently) charge for ephemeral ipv4 addresses, we can run a dual stack network (with both ipv4 and ipv6 configuration) for free. So this veilid node will have both enabled by default.

Setting up access

1. Sign up for a GCP account if you don't already have one and create a project. Just call it whatever you want, but use that value for project_name in locals.tf. You can create a new project by navigating to the cloud dashboard (see screenshot below):

2. Install the gcloud cli. The docs here are very good and easy to follow.

3. Set up authentication locally. Just run gcloud auth application-default login and you'll have the credentials stored for when you want to run commands via terraform.

Running the terraform commands

1. You will either need to create a project called "veilid-nodes" or update the project name in locals.tf to use an existing project.

2. Add your public SSH key to the metadata in main.tf in the format of "USER:PUBLIC_SSH_KEY_CONTENTS". I've left the veilid user in there by default, but you can specify whichever username you want.

If you want to use a separate SSH key, then generate one in this folder like ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -o -a 100 -f veilid-key.

3. Decide which region(s) you want to run a veilid node in, and uncomment the relevant line(s) in the locals.free_regions block in locals.tf. NOTE: only the regions in free_regions qualify for the free tier, so use one of those unless you want to spin up a bunch of nodes and pay more.

4. Run the terraform command and get a/some shiny new node(s)!

terraform init && terraform apply

Outputs:

public_ip_ipv4 = [
  "35.212.176.254",
]
public_ip_ipv6 = [
  "2600:1900:4040:6a7:0:0:0:0",
]

and you can connect via ssh like so:

ssh -i ROUTE_TO_PRIVATE_KEY veilid@IP_ADDRESS_FROM_OUTPUT

NOTE: since the cloud init script takes a bit of time to run, if you SSH in immediately, you might not have access to the veilid-cli command for a few minutes.