Using Terraform’s Documentation

Terraform is a system for building cloud resources to a specification. Resources are specific to a cloud vendor and are different for each vendor. To get the most out of Terraform you should learn how to use the Google provider reference to find the resources you need and learn how to configure them. In this lab we’ll take a closer look at how resources and how to use the reference manual.

Make a lab09 Directory

In your git repository, create copy the base directory to create a new directory for this lab.

$ cp -R base lab09
$ cd lab09

An Example Resource

Here’s the example instance resource from the base configuration:

resource "google_compute_instance" "vm_instance" {
  name         = "cis91"
  machine_type = "e2-micro"

  boot_disk {
    initialize_params {
      image = "ubuntu-os-cloud/ubuntu-2004-lts"
    }
  }

  network_interface {
    network = google_compute_network.vpc_network.name
    access_config {
    }
  }
}

The resource definitions begins with a type (google_compute_instance) and then specifies a name (vm_instance). Complex resources like an instance have multiple block definitions that are specific to that resource type. For example, the boot_disk block:

  boot_disk {
    initialize_params {
      image = "ubuntu-os-cloud/ubuntu-2004-lts"
    }
  }

Find the Documentation for an Instance

Use the GCP reference manual to search for “instance”. Notice how the results are organized by the particular Google product. When you find google_compute_instance click it and look at the reference page.

Note

Notice the attached_disk section. It can be used to attach extra disk resources.

Find the Documentation for a Disk

What if you want to create and attach a disk? In the instance resource you can only automatically create one disk. For additional disks you need to create the resources separately and attach them. Search for disk in the documentation. What resources do you find? How helpful is the example?

Update your Configuration

Using examples from the documentation see if you can add a disk. Test your code with terraform apply. With your new VM running SSH into it and see if you can find the disk in the /dev directory.

Turn In

There’s nothing to turn in. This is just for practice.