How to Import an Google Cloud Monitoring Dashboard into Terraform

Import Google Cloud Monitoring Dashboard with Terraback (recommended)

Terraback reverse-engineers your live infrastructure: it reads the Google Cloud Monitoring resource with read-only credentials, generates the HCL, and produces the exact import block. Two commands take you from a live Google Cloud Monitoring Dashboard 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_monitoring_dashboard.ops
  id = "projects/my-project/dashboards/1234567890123456789"
}

Example google_monitoring_dashboard configuration

Here is a realistic Google Cloud Monitoring Dashboard block. Terraback generates a fuller version from your actual resource attributes; this is a minimal, valid starting point.

resource "google_monitoring_dashboard" "ops" {
  dashboard_json = jsonencode({
    displayName = "Ops Overview"
    gridLayout = {
      widgets = []
    }
  })
}

Gotchas when importing a Google Cloud Monitoring Dashboard

• The dashboard_id is a server-generated number; you cannot pick it, so retrieve it from gcloud monitoring dashboards list before importing.
• The entire dashboard layout lives inside the dashboard_json string; a single whitespace or key-ordering difference can show as a perpetual diff, so jsonencode the canonical form returned by the API.
• The API normalizes some fields (adding etag, name, default widget settings), so expect to reconcile the JSON once after the first import.
• Dashboards reference metrics and alert policies by name only; those referenced resources are managed separately.

Doing it manually with terraform import

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