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# Google Cloud Platform Guide

## Introduction

Ansible + Google have been working together on a set of auto-generated Ansible modules designed to consistently and comprehensively cover the entirety of the Google Cloud Platform.

Ansible contains modules for managing Google Cloud Platform resources, including creating instances, controlling network access, working with persistent disks, managing load balancers, and a lot more.

These new modules can be found under a new consistent name scheme “gcp_*” (Note: gcp_target_proxy and gcp_url_map are legacy modules, despite the “gcp_*” name. Please use gcp_compute_target_proxy and gcp_compute_url_map instead).

Additionally, the gcp_compute inventory plugin can discover all GCE instances and make them automatically available in your Ansible inventory.

You may see a collection of other GCP modules that do not conform to this naming convention. These are the original modules primarily developed by the Ansible community. You will find some overlapping functionality such as with the “gce” module and the new “gcp_compute_instance” module. Either can be used, but you may experience issues trying to use them together.

While the community GCP modules are not going away, Google is investing effort into the new “gcp_*” modules. Google is committed to ensuring the Ansible community has a great experience with GCP and therefore recommends adopting these new modules if possible.

## Requisites

The Google Cloud Platform (GCP) modules require both the `requests` and the `google-auth` libraries to be installed.

    $ pip install requests google-auth

Alternatively for RHEL / CentOS, the `python-requests` package is also available to satisfy `requests` libraries.

    $ yum install python-requests

## Credentials

It’s easy to create a GCP account with credentials for Ansible. You have multiple options to get your credentials - here are two of the most common options:

- Service Accounts (Recommended): Use JSON service accounts with specific permissions.
- Machine Accounts: Use the permissions associated with the GCP Instance you’re using Ansible on.

For the following examples, we’ll be using service account credentials.

To work with the GCP modules, you’ll first need to get some credentials in the JSON format:

1. Create a Service Account
2. Download JSON credentials

Once you have your credentials, there are two different ways to provide them to Ansible:

- by specifying them directly as module parameters
- by setting environment variables

### Providing Credentials as Module Parameters

For the GCE modules you can specify the credentials as arguments:

- `auth_kind`: type of authentication being used (choices: machineaccount, serviceaccount, application)
- `service_account_email`: email associated with the project
- `service_account_file`: path to the JSON credentials file
- `project`: id of the project
- `scopes`: The specific scopes that you want the actions to use.

For example, to create a new IP address using the `gcp_compute_address` module, you can use the following configuration:

    - name: Create IP address
      hosts: localhost
      gather_facts: no

      vars:
        service_account_file: /home/my_account.json
        project: my-project
        auth_kind: serviceaccount
        scopes:
          - https://www.googleapis.com/auth/compute

      tasks:

       - name: Allocate an IP Address
         gcp_compute_address:
             state: present
             name: 'test-address1'
             region: 'us-west1'
             project: "{{ project }}"
             auth_kind: "{{ auth_kind }}"
             service_account_file: "{{ service_account_file }}"
             scopes: "{{ scopes }}"

### Providing Credentials as Environment Variables

Set the following environment variables before running Ansible in order to configure your credentials:

    GCP_AUTH_KIND
    GCP_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL
    GCP_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_FILE
    GCP_SCOPES

## GCE Dynamic Inventory

The best way to interact with your hosts is to use the gcp_compute inventory plugin, which dynamically queries GCE and tells Ansible what nodes can be managed.

To be able to use this GCE dynamic inventory plugin, you need to enable it first by specifying the following in the `ansible.cfg` file:

    [inventory]
    enable_plugins = gcp_compute

Then, create a file that ends in `.gcp.yml` in your root directory.

The gcp_compute inventory script takes in the same authentication information as any module.

Here’s an example of a valid inventory file:

    plugin: gcp_compute
    projects:
      - graphite-playground
    auth_kind: serviceaccount
    service_account_file: /home/alexstephen/my_account.json

Executing `ansible-inventory --list -i <filename>.gcp.yml` will create a list of GCP instances that are ready to be configured using Ansible.

### Create an instance

The full range of GCP modules provide the ability to create a wide variety of GCP resources with the full support of the entire GCP API.

The following playbook creates a GCE Instance. This instance relies on a GCP network and a Disk. By creating the Disk and Network separately, we can give as much detail as necessary about how we want the disk and network formatted. By registering a Disk/Network to a variable, we can simply insert the variable into the instance task. The gcp_compute_instance module will figure out the rest.

    - name: Create an instance
      hosts: localhost
      gather_facts: no
      vars:
          gcp_project: my-project
          gcp_cred_kind: serviceaccount
          gcp_cred_file: /home/my_account.json
          zone: "us-central1-a"
          region: "us-central1"

      tasks:
       - name: create a disk
         gcp_compute_disk:
             name: 'disk-instance'
             size_gb: 50
             source_image: 'projects/ubuntu-os-cloud/global/images/family/ubuntu-1604-lts'
             zone: "{{ zone }}"
             project: "{{ gcp_project }}"
             auth_kind: "{{ gcp_cred_kind }}"
             service_account_file: "{{ gcp_cred_file }}"
             scopes:
               - https://www.googleapis.com/auth/compute
             state: present
         register: disk
       - name: create a network
         gcp_compute_network:
             name: 'network-instance'
             project: "{{ gcp_project }}"
             auth_kind: "{{ gcp_cred_kind }}"
             service_account_file: "{{ gcp_cred_file }}"
             scopes:
               - https://www.googleapis.com/auth/compute
             state: present
         register: network
       - name: create a address
         gcp_compute_address:
             name: 'address-instance'
             region: "{{ region }}"
             project: "{{ gcp_project }}"
             auth_kind: "{{ gcp_cred_kind }}"
             service_account_file: "{{ gcp_cred_file }}"
             scopes:
               - https://www.googleapis.com/auth/compute
             state: present
         register: address
       - name: create a instance
         gcp_compute_instance:
             state: present
             name: test-vm
             machine_type: n1-standard-1
             disks:
               - auto_delete: true
                 boot: true
                 source: "{{ disk }}"
             network_interfaces:
                 - network: "{{ network }}"
                   access_configs:
                     - name: 'External NAT'
                       nat_ip: "{{ address }}"
                       type: 'ONE_TO_ONE_NAT'
             zone: "{{ zone }}"
             project: "{{ gcp_project }}"
             auth_kind: "{{ gcp_cred_kind }}"
             service_account_file: "{{ gcp_cred_file }}"
             scopes:
               - https://www.googleapis.com/auth/compute
         register: instance

        - name: Wait for SSH to come up
          wait_for: host={{ address.address }} port=22 delay=10 timeout=60

        - name: Add host to groupname
          add_host: hostname={{ address.address }} groupname=new_instances

    - name: Manage new instances
      hosts: new_instances
      connection: ssh
      sudo: True
      roles:
        - base_configuration
        - production_server

Note that use of the “add_host” module above creates a temporary, in-memory group. This means that a play in the same playbook can then manage machines in the ‘new_instances’ group, if so desired. Any sort of arbitrary configuration is possible at this point.

For more information about Google Cloud, please visit the Google Cloud website.

## Migration Guides

### gce.py -> gcp_compute_instance.py

As of Ansible 2.8, we’re encouraging everyone to move from the `gce` module to the `gcp_compute_instance` module. The `gcp_compute_instance` module has better support for all of GCP’s features, fewer dependencies, more flexibility, and better supports GCP’s authentication systems.

The `gcp_compute_instance` module supports all of the features of the `gce` module (and more!). Below is a mapping of `gce` fields over to `gcp_compute_instance` fields.

gce.py | gcp_compute_instance.py | Notes
--- | --- | ---
state | state/status | State on gce has multiple values: “present”, “absent”, “stopped”, “started”, “terminated”. State on gcp_compute_instance is used to describe if the instance exists (present) or does not (absent). Status is used to describe if the instance is “started”, “stopped” or “terminated”.
image | disks[].initialize_params.source_image | You’ll need to create a single disk using the disks[] parameter and set it to be the boot disk (disks[].boot = true)
image_family | disks[].initialize_params.source_image | See above.
external_projects | disks[].initialize_params.source_image | The name of the source_image will include the name of the project.
instance_names | Use a loop or multiple tasks. | Using loops is a more Ansible-centric way of creating multiple instances and gives you the most flexibility.
service_account_email | service_accounts[].email | This is the service_account email address that you want the instance to be associated with. It is not the service_account email address that is used for the credentials necessary to create the instance.
service_account_permissions | service_accounts[].scopes | These are the permissions you want to grant to the instance.
pem_file | Not supported. | We recommend using JSON service account credentials instead of PEM files.
credentials_file | service_account_file |
project_id | project |
name | name | This field does not accept an array of names. Use a loop to create multiple instances.
num_instances | Use a loop | For maximum flexibility, we’re encouraging users to use Ansible features to create multiple instances, rather than letting the module do it for you.
network | network_interfaces[].network |
subnetwork | network_interfaces[].subnetwork |
persistent_boot_disk | disks[].type = ‘PERSISTENT’ |
disks | disks[] |
ip_forward | can_ip_forward |
external_ip | network_interfaces[].access_configs.nat_ip | This field takes multiple types of values. You can create an IP address with `gcp_compute_address` and place the name/output of the address here. You can also place the string value of the IP address’s GCP name or the actual IP address.
disks_auto_delete | disks[].auto_delete |
preemptible | scheduling.preemptible |
disk_size | disks[].initialize_params.disk_size_gb |

An example playbook is below:

    gcp_compute_instance:
        name: "{{ item }}"
        machine_type: n1-standard-1
        ... # any other settings
        zone: us-central1-a
        project: "my-project"
        auth_kind: "service_account_file"
        service_account_file: "~/my_account.json"
        state: present
    with_items:
      - instance-1
      - instance-2