open-nomad/terraform/gcp

Provision a Nomad cluster on GCP

To get started, you will need a GCP account.

Welcome

This tutorial will teach you how to deploy Nomad clusters to the Google Cloud Platform using Packer and Terraform.

Includes:

• Installing HashiCorp Tools (Nomad, Consul, Vault, Terraform, and Packer).
• Installing the GCP SDK CLI Tools, if you're not using Cloud Shell.
• Creating a new GCP project, along with a Terraform Service Account.
• Building a golden image using Packer.
• Deploying a cluster with Terraform.

Install HashiCorp Tools

Nomad

Download the latest version of Nomad from HashiCorp's website by copying and pasting this snippet in the terminal:

curl "https://releases.hashicorp.com/nomad/0.12.0/nomad_0.12.0_linux_amd64.zip" -o nomad.zip
unzip nomad.zip
sudo mv nomad /usr/local/bin
nomad --version

Consul

Download the latest version of Consul from HashiCorp's website by copying and pasting this snippet in the terminal:

curl "https://releases.hashicorp.com/consul/1.8.0/consul_1.8.0_linux_amd64.zip" -o consul.zip
unzip consul.zip
sudo mv consul /usr/local/bin
consul --version

Vault

Download the latest version of Vault from HashiCorp's website by copying and pasting this snippet in the terminal:

curl "https://releases.hashicorp.com/vault/1.4.3/vault_1.4.3_linux_amd64.zip" -o vault.zip
unzip vault.zip
sudo mv vault /usr/local/bin
vault --version

Packer

Download the latest version of Packer from HashiCorp's website by copying and pasting this snippet in the terminal:

curl "https://releases.hashicorp.com/packer/1.6.0/packer_1.6.0_linux_amd64.zip" -o packer.zip
unzip packer.zip
sudo mv packer /usr/local/bin
packer --version

Terraform

Download the latest version of Terraform from HashiCorp's website by copying and pasting this snippet in the terminal:

curl "https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/0.12.28/terraform_0.12.28_linux_amd64.zip" -o terraform.zip
unzip terraform.zip
sudo mv terraform /usr/local/bin
terraform --version

Install the GCP SDK Command Line Tools

Note

: if you are using the free Google Cloud Shell VM, you will already have gcloud installed. So, you can safely skip this step.

To install the GCP SDK Command Line Tools, follow the installation instructions for your specific operating system:

• Linux
• MacOS
• Windows

Initialize the SDK

To perform common setup tasks like authorizing with GCP using gcloud, if you haven't already done so, run the following command:

gcloud init

Create a New Project

Generate a project ID with the following command:

export GOOGLE_PROJECT="nomad-gcp-$(cat /dev/random | head -c 5 | xxd -p)"

Using that project ID, create a new GCP project:

gcloud projects create $GOOGLE_PROJECT

And then set your gcloud config to use that project:

gcloud config set project $GOOGLE_PROJECT

Link Billing Account to Project

Next, let's link a billing account to that project. To determine what billing accounts are available, run the following command:

gcloud alpha billing accounts list

Locate the ACCOUNT_ID for the billing account you want to use, and set the GOOGLE_BILLING_ACCOUNT environment variable. Replace the XXXXXXX with the ACCOUNT_ID you located with the previous command output:

export GOOGLE_BILLING_ACCOUNT="XXXXXXX"

So we can link the GOOGLE_BILLING_ACCOUNT with the previously created GOOGLE_PROJECT:

gcloud alpha billing projects link "$GOOGLE_PROJECT" --billing-account "$GOOGLE_BILLING_ACCOUNT"

Enable Compute API

In order to deploy VMs to the project, we need to enable the compute API:

gcloud services enable compute.googleapis.com

Create Terraform Service Account

Finally, let's create a Terraform Service Account user and its account.json credentials file:

gcloud iam service-accounts create terraform \
    --display-name "Terraform Service Account" \
    --description "Service account to use with Terraform"

gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding "$GOOGLE_PROJECT" \
  --member serviceAccount:"terraform@$GOOGLE_PROJECT.iam.gserviceaccount.com" \
  --role roles/editor

gcloud iam service-accounts keys create account.json \
    --iam-account "terraform@$GOOGLE_PROJECT.iam.gserviceaccount.com"

⚠️ Warning

The account.json credentials gives privileged access to this GCP project. Be careful to avoid leaking these credentials by accidentally committing them to version control systems such as git, or storing them where they are visible to others. In general, storing these credentials on an individually operated, private computer (like your laptop) or in your own GCP cloud shell is acceptable for testing purposes. For production use, or for teams, use a secrets management system like HashiCorp Vault For this tutorial's purposes, we'll be storing the account.json credentials on disk in the cloud shell.

Now set the full path of the newly created account.json file as GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable.

export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=$(realpath account.json)

Ensure Required Environment Variables Are Set

Before moving onto the next steps, ensure the following environment variables are set:

• GOOGLE_PROJECT with your selected GCP project name.
• GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS with the full path to the Terraform Service Account account.json credentials file created in the last step.

Build HashiStack Golden Image with Packer

Packer is HashiCorp's open source tool for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration. The machine image created here can be customized through modifications to the build configuration file and the shell script.

Use the following command to build the machine image:

packer build packer.json

Provision a cluster with Terraform

Change into the env/us-east environment directory:

cd env/us-east

Initialize Terraform:

terraform init

Plan infrastructure changes with Terraform:

terraform plan -var="project=${GOOGLE_PROJECT}" -var="credentials=${GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS}" 

Apply infrastructure changes with Terraform:

terraform apply -auto-approve -var="project=${GOOGLE_PROJECT}" -var="credentials=${GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS}" 

Access the Cluster

You can now access the cluster in several ways.

UI

Put the hashistack_load_balancer_external_ip Terraform Output in your web browser to access the UI.

CLI

Export following environment variables:

export HASHISTACK_LB_EXTERNAL_IP=$(terraform output -json | jq -r '.hashistack_load_balancer_external_ip.value')
export NOMAD_ADDR="http://$HASHISTACK_LB_EXTERNAL_IP:4646"
export CONSUL_HTTP_ADDR="http://$HASHISTACK_LB_EXTERNAL_IP:8500"
export VAULT_ADDR="http://$HASHISTACK_LB_EXTERNAL_IP:8200"

The next steps will show you example commands.

SSH

Use gcloud to SSH into one of the servers:

gcloud compute ssh hashistack-server-0 --zone=us-east1-c

Next Steps

Click here for next steps.

Conclusion

You have deployed a Nomad cluster to GCP!

Destroy Infrastrucure

To destroy all the demo infrastrucure:

terraform destroy -force -var="project=${GOOGLE_PROJECT}" -var="credentials=${GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS}"