How to Import an Google Compute Firewall Rule into Terraform

Import Google Compute Firewall Rule with Terraback (recommended)

Terraback reverse-engineers your live infrastructure: it reads the Compute Engine resource with read-only credentials, generates the HCL, and produces the exact import block. Two commands take you from a live Google Compute Firewall Rule to managed Terraform.

terraback scan all gcp --project my-gcp-project

terraback gcp import --method bulk

The Terraform import block

Terraback emits a Terraform 1.5+ import block like the one below. Because the block lives in your configuration, the import is reviewable in a pull request and repeatable across environments.

import {
  to = google_compute_firewall.allow_ssh
  id = "projects/my-project/global/firewalls/allow-ssh"
}

Example google_compute_firewall configuration

Here is a realistic Google Compute Firewall Rule block. Terraback generates a fuller version from your actual resource attributes; this is a minimal, valid starting point.

resource "google_compute_firewall" "allow_ssh" {
  name      = "allow-ssh"
  network   = "projects/my-project/global/networks/prod-vpc"
  direction = "INGRESS"
  priority  = 1000

  source_ranges = ["0.0.0.0/0"]
  target_tags   = ["ssh"]

  allow {
    protocol = "tcp"
    ports    = ["22"]
  }
}

Gotchas when importing a Google Compute Firewall Rule

• VPC firewall rules are a global resource even though they govern regional traffic; the import path uses global/firewalls.
• These are legacy network firewall rules; firewall policies are the separate google_compute_firewall_policy_rule family.
• A rule has either allow or deny blocks, never both, and direction defaults to INGRESS.
• network must reference the VPC by its full self link or name; a bare default may not match what the rule actually targets.

Doing it manually with terraform import

The native approach is to write the google_compute_firewall block by hand, then run terraform import google_compute_firewall.example <import-id> for every resource, one at a time. That works for a handful of resources, but it does not scale: you author all the HCL yourself and repeat the command for each item. Terraback generates the HCL and the import blocks for your whole account in one pass.

Import other Google Cloud resources