Creating a Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster and deploying a WordPress application using Terraform involves several steps. Terraform is a powerful infrastructure-as-code tool that allows you to define and manage cloud resources in a declarative manner. In this post, I’ll guide you through creating a basic GKE cluster and deploying WordPress to it.
Before you begin, make sure you have the following prerequisites:
- A Google Cloud Platform (GCP) account and a project set up.
- Terraform installed on your local machine.
- Google Cloud SDK (gcloud) installed and authenticated with your GCP project.
- A basic understanding of Terraform and Kubernetes.
Here are the steps to create a GKE cluster and deploy WordPress using Terraform:
Set Up Your Terraform Configuration:
Create a directory for your Terraform configuration and create a main.tf file with the following contents:
I used the code from the GitHub repository and cloned it to a server using Git command to complete the process of setting up the entire article.
Initialize Terraform:
Run the following command in your Terraform directory to initialize the Google Cloud provider:
$ terraform init Initializing the backend... Initializing provider plugins... - Finding latest version of hashicorp/kubernetes... - Finding hashicorp/google versions matching "4.74.0"... - Finding latest version of hashicorp/helm... - Installing hashicorp/kubernetes v2.23.0... - Installed hashicorp/kubernetes v2.23.0 (signed by HashiCorp) - Installing hashicorp/google v4.74.0... - Installed hashicorp/google v4.74.0 (signed by HashiCorp) - Installing hashicorp/helm v2.11.0... - Installed hashicorp/helm v2.11.0 (signed by HashiCorp) Terraform has created a lock file .terraform.lock.hcl to record the provider selections it made above. Include this file in your version control repository so that Terraform can guarantee to make the same selections by default when you run "terraform init" in the future. Terraform has been successfully initialized!
You may now begin working with Terraform. Try running “terraform plan” to see
any changes that are required for your infrastructure. All Terraform commands
should now work.
If you ever set or change modules or backend configuration for Terraform,
rerun this command to reinitialize your working directory. If you forget, other
commands will detect it and remind you to do so if necessary.
Terraform Plan:
I ran the ‘terraform plan’ command, but there are some necessary actions that need to be taken before proceeding.
$ gcloud auth login
Go to the following link in your browser:
$ gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID $ gcloud config set project kindy-34411 Updated property [core/project]. $ gcloud auth application-default login
These credentials will be used by any library that requests Application Default Credentials (ADC).
$ terraform plan data.google_container_engine_versions.gke_version: Reading... data.google_client_config.provider: Reading... data.google_client_config.provider: Read complete after 0s [id=projects/"kindy-34411"/regions/"us-central1"/zones/<null>] data.google_container_engine_versions.gke_version: Read complete after 2s [id=2023-09-21 03:28:39.334811264 +0000 UTC] Terraform used the selected providers to generate the following execution plan. Resource actions are indicated with the following symbols: + create Terraform will perform the following actions: ............. Plan: 8 to add, 0 to change, 0 to destroy. Changes to Outputs: + kubernetes_cluster_host = (known after apply) + kubernetes_cluster_name = "kindy-34411-gke" + project_id = "kindy-34411" + region = "us-central1" ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Note: You didn’t use the -out option to save this plan, so Terraform can’t guarantee to take exactly these actions if you run “terraform apply” now.
Terraform Apply:
Apply the Terraform configuration to create the GKE cluster and deploy WordPress:
$ terraform apply data.google_container_engine_versions.gke_version: Reading... data.google_client_config.provider: Reading... data.google_client_config.provider: Read complete after 0s [id=projects/"kindy-34411"/regions/"us-central1"/zones/<null>] data.google_container_engine_versions.gke_version: Read complete after 1s [id=2023-09-21 03:31:16.488954756 +0000 UTC] Terraform used the selected providers to generate the following execution plan. Resource actions are indicated with the following symbols: + create Terraform will perform the following actions: ............. Plan: 8 to add, 0 to change, 0 to destroy. Changes to Outputs: + kubernetes_cluster_host = (known after apply) + kubernetes_cluster_name = "kindy-34411-gke" + project_id = "kindy-34411" + region = "us-central1" Do you want to perform these actions? Terraform will perform the actions described above. Only 'yes' will be accepted to approve. Enter a value: yes google_compute_network.vpc: Creating... google_compute_network.vpc: Still creating... [10s elapsed] google_compute_network.vpc: Creation complete after 12s [id=projects/kindy-34411/global/networks/kindy-34411-vpc] google_compute_subnetwork.subnet: Creating... google_compute_subnetwork.subnet: Still creating... [10s elapsed] google_compute_subnetwork.subnet: Creation complete after 14s [id=projects/kindy-34411/regions/us-central1/subnetworks/kindy-34411-subnet] google_container_cluster.primary: Creating... google_container_cluster.primary: Still creating... [10s elapsed] ............. Apply complete! Resources: 8 added, 0 changed, 0 destroyed. Outputs: kubernetes_cluster_host = "37.122.74.177" kubernetes_cluster_name = "kindy-34411-gke" project_id = "kindy-34411" region = "us-central1"
Setup Completed.
Connecting GKE Cluster:
$ gcloud container clusters get-credentials kindy-34411-gke --zone us-central2-a Fetching cluster endpoint and auth data. kubeconfig entry generated for kindy-34411-gke.
Verifying Cluster:
$ kubectl get nodes NAME STATUS ROLES AGE VERSION gke-kindy-34411-kindy-34411-65a8ba69-cfsn Ready <none> 7m2s v1.27.4-gke.900 gke-kindy-34411-kindy-34411-65a8ba69-gt2m Ready <none> 7m2s v1.27.4-gke.900 $ kubectl get all NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE pod/hello-app-5fd4d7d9d5-2vztr 1/1 Running 0 8m7s pod/ingress-nginx-controller-5dcc7dbd55-5kbzz 1/1 Running 0 6m41s pod/wordpress-78bb764d54-hqnz9 1/1 Running 0 8m3s pod/wordpress-mysql-b759dbb45-9mslj 1/1 Running 0 8m3s NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE service/hello-app ClusterIP 10.211.245.106 <none> 8080/TCP 8m9s service/ingress-nginx-controller LoadBalancer 10.211.248.41 34.30.97.23 80:32605/TCP,443:32150/TCP 6m42s service/ingress-nginx-controller-admission ClusterIP 10.211.255.163 <none> 443/TCP 6m42s service/kubernetes ClusterIP 10.211.240.1 <none> 443/TCP 12m service/wordpress ClusterIP 10.211.249.145 <none> 80/TCP 8m4s service/wordpress-mysql ClusterIP None <none> 3306/TCP 8m4s NAME READY UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE deployment.apps/hello-app 1/1 1 1 8m8s deployment.apps/ingress-nginx-controller 1/1 1 1 6m42s deployment.apps/wordpress 1/1 1 1 8m4s deployment.apps/wordpress-mysql 1/1 1 1 8m4s NAME DESIRED CURRENT READY AGE replicaset.apps/hello-app-5fd4d7d9d5 1 1 1 8m8s replicaset.apps/ingress-nginx-controller-5dcc7dbd55 1 1 1 6m42s replicaset.apps/wordpress-78bb764d54 1 1 1 8m4s replicaset.apps/wordpress-mysql-b759dbb45 1 1 1 8m4s
Cleanup (Optional):
If you want to destroy the resources created by Terraform when you’re done, you can use:
$ terraform destroy Destroy complete! Resources: 8 destroyed.
This example provides a basic setup for deploying WordPress on a GKE cluster using Terraform. Depending on your specific requirements, you may want to customize the configuration further, such as setting up a managed Cloud SQL database for WordPress, configuring SSL certificates, and so on.
References:
https://kubernetes.io/docs/
https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/containers/what-is-kubernetes
https://www.ibm.com/topics/kubernetes
https://www.infoworld.com/article/3268073/what-is-kubernetes-your-next-application-platform.html
https://www.terraform.io/
https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/intro
https://registry.terraform.io/
https://registry.terraform.io/providers/hashicorp/terraform/latest
https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/language/resources
https://www.pluralsight.com/resources/blog/cloud/the-ultimate-terraform-cheatsheet
