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GCP Compute Instance Template

A Google Cloud Compute Instance Template is a reusable description of the properties required to create a virtual machine (VM) instance. It encapsulates details such as machine type, boot image, disks, network interfaces, metadata, tags, and service-account settings. Once defined, the template can be used by users, managed instance groups, autoscalers, or other automation to create identically configured VMs at scale.
Official documentation: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instance-templates

Terrafrom Mappings:

  • google_compute_instance_template.name

Supported Methods​

  • GET: Get a gcp-compute-instance-template by its "name"
  • LIST: List all gcp-compute-instance-template
  • SEARCH: Search for instance templates by network tag. The query is a plain network tag name.

gcp-cloud-kms-crypto-key​

An instance template can reference a customer-managed encryption key (CMEK) from Cloud KMS to encrypt the persistent disks defined in the template.

gcp-compute-disk​

Boot and additional persistent disks are specified inside the template. Any disk image or snapshot expanded into an actual persistent disk at instance-creation time will appear as a linked compute-disk resource.

gcp-compute-firewall​

The network tags set in the template are used by VMs launched from it. Firewall rules that target those tags therefore become effective for every instance derived from the template.

gcp-compute-image​

The template’s boot disk references a specific compute image (public, custom, or shared). This image is the source from which the VM’s root filesystem is created.

gcp-compute-instance​

When a VM is launched using this template—either manually or by a managed instance group—the resulting resource is a compute-instance that maintains a provenance link back to the template.

gcp-compute-network​

Each network interface declared in the template must point to a VPC network, establishing the connectivity context for all future instances based on the template.

gcp-compute-node-group​

If node affinity is configured in the template, instances created from it will attempt to schedule onto the specified sole-tenant node group.

gcp-compute-reservation​

A template can include reservation affinity, causing newly created VMs to consume capacity from a specific Compute Engine reservation.

gcp-compute-route​

Although routes are defined at the network level, all VMs derived from the template inherit those routes through their attached network, so routing behaviour is indirectly influenced by the template.

gcp-compute-security-policy​

If instances launched from the template are later attached to backend services that use Cloud Armor security policies, their traffic will be evaluated against those policies; tracing the link helps assess exposure.

gcp-compute-snapshot​

The template may specify a source snapshot instead of an image for one or more disks, resulting in disks that are restored from those snapshots at VM creation time.

gcp-compute-subnetwork​

For each network interface, the template can identify a specific subnetwork, dictating the IP range from which the instance will draw its primary internal address.

gcp-iam-service-account​

A service account can be attached in the template so that every VM started from it runs with the same IAM identity and associated OAuth scopes.