Terraform and Helm on GKE quickstart

This quickstart will walk you through:

• Using terraform to create and manage a GKE cluster in a VPC network
• Configuring kubectl for access to the GKE cluster's control plane
• Using helm to create and manage a release of a sample service on your GKE cluster
• Cleanup/teardown

Prerequisites

You will need:

• A Google account for use with Google Cloud Platform
• A GCP project with the Compute Engine API and the Kubernetes Engine API enabled
• Basic knowledge in command line interfaces
• A shell with the following installed:
  • Helm v3
  • Google Cloud SDK (and with gcloud set up for your account)
  • Terraform
  • Kubectl

If you are attending the TDC session instructions will be given for Google's Cloud Shell Editor, which has all of the required tools installed and already configured. It is strongly recommended to use the Cloud Shell Editor if you are new to these tools.

Tip for Cloud Shell Editor: Go to Preferences -> search for "yaml validate" and turn OFF the yaml validation.

Helm charts have templated files, which are .yaml files that have templating code inside them and is therefore not valid yaml. Turning off yaml validation helps when working with these templates.

If you are planning on using your local machine and not the Cloud Shell Editor here are some links to installation instructions

• Installing Terraform
• Installing Helm
• Installing kubectl

Disclaimer

Following this quickstart will incur a cost for the cloud resources that are created. The costs associated with following this quickstart should stay well below a dollar per hour but please make sure to follow the instructions in the cleanup section to avoid unnecessary costs. If you are unsure you did the cleanup correctly you can inspect your billing account in Google Cloud Platform in a day or two, or consider deleting the project you created resources in.

Contents

• 1. Getting started with Terraform
• 2. Getting started with Helm
• 3. Cleanup