How to Import an Google Compute Regional Forwarding Rule into Terraform

Import Google Compute Regional Forwarding 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 Regional Forwarding 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_forwarding_rule.ilb
  id = "projects/my-project/regions/us-central1/forwardingRules/ilb-front"
}

Example google_compute_forwarding_rule configuration

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

resource "google_compute_forwarding_rule" "ilb" {
  name                  = "ilb-front"
  region                = "us-central1"
  load_balancing_scheme = "INTERNAL"
  ip_protocol           = "TCP"
  ports                 = ["80"]
  backend_service       = google_compute_region_backend_service.web.id
}

Gotchas when importing a Google Compute Regional Forwarding Rule

• google_compute_forwarding_rule is regional; a global external load balancer front end is the separate google_compute_global_forwarding_rule resource.
• Internal load balancers reference a backend_service, while external ones reference a target; set only the one that applies.
• ports vs port_range vs all_ports are mutually exclusive depending on the load balancing scheme.
• ip_address may be a reserved google_compute_address or an ephemeral IP; an ephemeral IP can change if the rule is recreated.

Doing it manually with terraform import

The native approach is to write the google_compute_forwarding_rule block by hand, then run terraform import google_compute_forwarding_rule.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