How to Import an Google Compute Global Forwarding Rule into Terraform

Import Google Compute Global 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 Global 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_global_forwarding_rule.https
  id = "projects/my-project/global/forwardingRules/https-front"
}

Example google_compute_global_forwarding_rule configuration

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

resource "google_compute_global_forwarding_rule" "https" {
  name                  = "https-front"
  load_balancing_scheme = "EXTERNAL_MANAGED"
  ip_protocol           = "TCP"
  port_range            = "443"
  target                = google_compute_target_https_proxy.https.id
}

Gotchas when importing a Google Compute Global Forwarding Rule

• This is the global resource and uses a global/forwardingRules path; regional front ends use google_compute_forwarding_rule with a regions/<region> path.
• target points at a target proxy (HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, or SSL), which in turn references a URL map; import those resources too.
• Global forwarding rules use port_range (such as 443), not the ports list used by some regional schemes.
• ip_address is usually a reserved google_compute_global_address; without it the IP is ephemeral and may change.

Doing it manually with terraform import

The native approach is to write the google_compute_global_forwarding_rule block by hand, then run terraform import google_compute_global_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