mvk/src/content/docs/guides/3. gcloud/020-create-gcloud-infra.md

title	description
Create gcloud infrastructure	A guide to creating gcloud infrastructure.

Clone the infctl repo if you have not yet done so. We will work on the assumption that we are working in a home directory called projects.

cd ~/projects

if [ ! -d "infctl-cli" ]; then
    git clone https://codeberg.org/headshed/infctl-cli
    cd infctl-cli
else
    cd infctl-cli
fi

we need to configure some environment variables to let our build know some things about our project.

cp .env.gcloud-example .env

edit our newly created .env file and give it values that are appropriate to our gcloud account, for example:

PROJECT_NAME="my-very-own-dev-lab"
EMAIL="your.email@mailsomewhere.com"
APP_DOMAIN_NAME="atestdr.yourdomain.com"

where each of these variables represent:

• your project name, often called the project id in gcloud
• your email that you wish to be identified with for DNS and TLS encryption
• the domain name you want to use for this project when it is on line

Activate these in the current shell with:

source .env

Before we go any further, we need to confirm we have our gcloud environment ready and configured:

gcloud compute instances list --project="$PROJECT_NAME" \
&& gcloud compute disks list --project="$PROJECT_NAME" \
&& gcloud compute firewall-rules list --project="$PROJECT_NAME" \
&& gcloud storage buckets list --project="$PROJECT_NAME"

We should see pretty much an empty list but for default rules assigned for us by Google to our project to accept SSH, RDP and ICMP traffic - 4 lines in all.

To build the infrastructure :

LOG_FORMAT=none infctl -f gcloud/tf/scripts/build-gcloud-k3s-pipeline.json

You should see a successful build ending with something like:

Apply complete! Resources: 0 added, 0 changed, 0 destroyed.

Outputs:
k3s_vm_public_ip = "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx"
project_number = "..233434.."
✅ Step completed: run tofu
✅ 🚀 Pipeline completed successfully

Take a note of public IP address assigned to your VM as in xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx in the above example.

You need to create an A record in your DNS console to point to this address, using the environment name you set for your app earlier

echo $APP_DOMAIN_NAME
<whatever you set your application full domain name to>

Setting an A Record in your chosen or Cloudflare DNS

If you are using Cloudflare DNS, you can follow the below or use as a guide for your chosen DNS console...

1. Log in to your Cloudflare dashboard.
2. Select your domain.
3. Go to the DNS tab.
4. Click Add record.
5. Choose A as the record type.
6. Enter your subdomain (e.g., atestdr) in the Name field.
7. Enter your VM's public IP address in the IPv4 address field.
8. Set the record to be DNS only and a low TTL, for example 5 min.
9. Click Save.

Your domain should now point to your VM's public IP.