Terraform best practices for GCP

Follow these best practices for a smooth Terraform deployment.

Specify correct zones

For Multi‑Zone, specify exactly three zones and allow cross‑zone subnet communications.

Use supported hardware and software

Use supported node counts, drive sizes, and machine types. Data reduction volumes require n4-highmem-32.

Specify correct VPC information

Align host MTUs to the compute VPC. Enable ALUA (iSCSI) or ANA (NVMe).

Test in a sandbox

Deploy Terrraform in a non-production environment first to validate the setup.

Use version control

Store terraform.tfvars in a secure, version-controlled repository to track changes.

Enable encryption

Set ebs_volume_encryption = "enable" for enhanced security.

Terraform state

Do not edit or delete the Terraform state in GCS.

Monitor costs

Use billing_code to track GCP resource usage in your account.

Validate inputs

Double-check terraform.tfvars for valid values (for example, supported instance types and correct VPC/subnet IDs).