How to Import an Google Compute Disk Snapshot into Terraform

Import Google Compute Disk Snapshot 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 Disk Snapshot 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_snapshot.data
  id = "projects/my-project/global/snapshots/data-2024-01-01"
}

Example google_compute_snapshot configuration

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

resource "google_compute_snapshot" "data" {
  name        = "data-2024-01-01"
  source_disk = "projects/my-project/zones/us-central1-a/disks/data-disk"

  storage_locations = ["us-central1"]
}

Gotchas when importing a Google Compute Disk Snapshot

• Snapshots are a global resource even though source_disk is zonal; the import path uses global/snapshots.
• source_disk is a creation-time field; if the original disk is gone the snapshot still imports, but Terraform cannot recreate it.
• Snapshots are immutable, so changing almost any attribute forces a new snapshot.
• Scheduled snapshots created by a resource policy are better managed through that google_compute_resource_policy than imported individually.

Doing it manually with terraform import

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