How to Import an Google Compute Engine Instance into Terraform

Import Google Compute Engine Instance with Terraback (recommended)

Terraback reverse-engineers your live infrastructure: it reads the Google 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 Engine Instance 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_instance.web
  id = "projects/my-project/zones/us-central1-a/instances/web-1"
}

Example google_compute_instance configuration

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

resource "google_compute_instance" "web" {
  name         = "web-1"
  machine_type = "e2-medium"
  zone         = "us-central1-a"

  boot_disk {
    initialize_params {
      image = "debian-cloud/debian-12"
    }
  }

  network_interface {
    network = "default"
    access_config {}
  }
}

Gotchas when importing a Google Compute Engine Instance

• The import ID must be the full projects/<project>/zones/<zone>/instances/<name> path, not just the instance name.
• Depending on how they were created, attached disks may import inline or as separate google_compute_disk resources.
• Metadata, including SSH keys, imports as a map; project-wide metadata is managed separately.
• Changing machine_type is allowed in place, but changing zone or boot image forces recreation.

Doing it manually with terraform import

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