Setting Up a Cluster on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) With Terraform 🚀

Welcome to the guide for setting up your own Bacalhau cluster across multiple Google Cloud Platform (GCP) regions! This guide will walk you through creating a robust, distributed compute cluster that's perfect for running your Bacalhau workloads.

What You'll Build

Think of this as building your own distributed supercomputer! Your cluster will provision compute nodes spread across different GCP regions for global coverage.

Before You Start

You'll need a few things ready:

Terraform (version 1.0.0 or newer)
A running Bacalhau orchestrator node
Google Cloud SDK installed and set up
An active GCP billing account
Your organization ID handy
An SSH key pair for securely accessing your nodes

Quick Setup Guide

Make sure you are logged in with GCP. This could involve both of the following commands:

gcloud auth login
gcloud auth application-default login

Clone the examples repo to your machine and go into the GCP directory.

gh repo clone bacalhau-project/examples
cd setting-up-bacalhau-cluster/setting-up-bacalhau-with-terraform-on-GC

Now, make a copy of the example environment file:
```
cp env.json.example env.json
```
Open up env.json and fill in your GCP details (more on this below!)

Update your config/config.yaml with your orchestrator information. Specifically, these lines:

  Orchestrators:
    - nats://EXAMPLE-7a02-4083-bf08-bcc2f5fbc025.us1.cloud.expanso.dev:4222
  Auth:
    Token: "EXAMPLE-aEEFukWVffnf5jb9QkpNnwfiBWEk3475csM7ysudpbFTzYBap5c7sWr6"

Let Terraform get everything ready:
```
terraform init --env-file env.json
```
Launch your cluster:
```
terraform apply --env-file env.json
```

The entire process takes about 8 minutes, but should end with something like the below:

Apply complete! Resources: 17 added, 0 changed, 0 destroyed.

deployment_status = {
  "asia-northeast1" = {
    "external_ip" = "35.221.64.233"
    "health_check" = "healthy"
    "name" = "bacalhau-cluster-2501020854-asia-northeast1-vm"
  }
  
[...]

  "europe-west12" = {
    "external_ip" = "34.17.50.110"
    "internal_ip" = "10.210.0.2"
    "name" = "bacalhau-cluster-2501020854-europe-west12-vm"
    "zone" = "europe-west12-a"
  }
}

You're good to go!

Customizing Your Network

The env.json file is where all the magic happens. Here's what you'll need to fill in:

Essential Settings

bootstrap_project_id: Your existing GCP project (just used for setup)
base_project_name: What you want to call your new project
gcp_billing_account_id: Where the charges should go
gcp_user_email: Your GCP email address
org_id: Your organization's ID
app_tag: A friendly name for your resources (like "bacalhau-demo")

Node Configuration

bacalhau_data_dir: Where job data should be stored
bacalhau_node_dir: Where node configs should live
username: Your SSH username
public_key: Path to your SSH public key

Location Settings

You can set up nodes in different regions with custom configurations:

"locations": {
  "us-central1": {
    "zone": "us-central1-a",
    "node_count": 3,
    "machine_type": "e2-standard-4"
  }
}

Taking Your Cluster for a Test Drive

Once everything's up and running, let's make sure it works!

First configure the CLI to use your cluster:

bacalhau config set -c API.Host=<orchestrator-ip>

Check on the health of your nodes:
```
bacalhau node list
```

Run a simple test job:

bacalhau docker run ubuntu echo "Hello from my cluster!"

Check on your jobs:
```
bacalhau list
```
Get your results:
```
bacalhau get <job-id>
```

Troubleshooting Tips

Having issues? Here are some common solutions:

Deployment Problems

Double-check your GCP permissions
Make sure your billing account is active
Verify that all needed APIs are turned on in GCP

Node Health Issues

Look at the logs on a node: journalctl -u bacalhau-startup.service
Check Docker logs on a node: docker logs <container-id>
Make sure that port 4222 isn't blocked

Job Running Troubles

Verify your NATS connection settings
Check if nodes are properly registered
Make sure compute is enabled in your config

Cleaning Up

When you're done, clean everything up with:

terraform destroy --env-file env.json

Need to Check on Things?

If you need to peek under the hood, here's how:

Find your node IPs:
```
terraform output instance_ips
```
SSH into a node:
```
ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa ubuntu@<public-ip>
```
Check on Docker:
```
docker ps
```

Go into the container on the node:

CONTAINER_ID=$(docker ps --filter name=^/bacalhau_node --format '{{.ID}}' | head -n1)
docker exec -it $CONTAINER_ID /bin/bash

Understanding the Configuration Files

Here's what each important file does in your setup:

Core Files

main.tf: Your main Terraform configuration
variables.tf: Where input variables are defined
outputs.tf: What information Terraform will show you
config/config.yaml: How your Bacalhau nodes are configured
scripts/startup.sh: Gets your nodes ready to run
scripts/bacalhau-startup.service: Manages the Bacalhau service

Cloud-Init and Docker Setup

cloud-init/init-vm.yml: Sets up your VM environment, installs packages, and gets services running
config/docker-compose.yml: Runs Bacalhau in a privileged container with all the right volumes and health checks

The neat thing is that most of your configuration happens in just one file: env.json. Though if you want to get fancy, there's lots more you can customize!

Need Help?

If you get stuck or have questions:

We're here to help you get your cluster running smoothly! 🌟

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Apply complete! Resources: 17 added, 0 changed, 0 destroyed. deployment_status = { "asia-northeast1" = { "external_ip" = "35.221.64.233" "health_check" = "healthy" "name" = "bacalhau-cluster-2501020854-asia-northeast1-vm" } [...] "europe-west12" = { "external_ip" = "34.17.50.110" "internal_ip" = "10.210.0.2" "name" = "bacalhau-cluster-2501020854-europe-west12-vm" "zone" = "europe-west12-a" } }