Managing GCP infrastructure with Terraform at Pangea

At Pangea, we use Terraform to manage our GCP infrastructure for the FX and payments platform. Infrastructure as code enables version control, reproducibility, and safer deployments.

Why Terraform?

Terraform provides:

• Declarative infrastructure
• Version control
• State management
• Multi-cloud support
• Plan before apply

Our Setup

# main.tf
terraform {
  required_version = ">= 1.0"
  
  backend "gcs" {
    bucket = "pangea-terraform-state"
    prefix = "production"
  }
  
  required_providers {
    google = {
      source  = "hashicorp/google"
      version = "~> 5.0"
    }
  }
}

provider "google" {
  project = var.project_id
  region  = var.region
}

Cloud Run Services

resource "google_cloud_run_service" "api" {
  name     = "pangea-api"
  location = var.region
  
  template {
    spec {
      containers {
        image = "gcr.io/${var.project_id}/api:${var.image_tag}"
        
        resources {
          limits = {
            cpu    = "2"
            memory = "4Gi"
          }
        }
        
        env {
          name  = "DATABASE_URL"
          value = var.database_url
        }
      }
    }
    
    metadata {
      annotations = {
        "autoscaling.knative.dev/maxScale" = "100"
        "run.googleapis.com/cloudsql-instances" = google_sql_database_instance.main.connection_name
      }
    }
  }
  
  traffic {
    percent         = 100
    latest_revision = true
  }
}

Pub/Sub Topics

resource "google_pubsub_topic" "payment_events" {
  name = "payment-events"
  
  message_retention_duration = "604800s" # 7 days
}

resource "google_pubsub_subscription" "payment_processor" {
  name  = "payment-processor-sub"
  topic = google_pubsub_topic.payment_events.name
  
  ack_deadline_seconds = 60
  
  expiration_policy {
    ttl = "300000.5s" # ~3.5 days
  }
  
  retry_policy {
    minimum_backoff = "10s"
    maximum_backoff = "600s"
  }
}

Best Practices

• Use modules for reusable components
• Separate environments (dev, staging, prod)
• Lock state files
• Review plans before applying
• Use variables for configuration
• Document everything

"Infrastructure as code is essential for reliability."

Lessons Learned

1. Start with modules early
2. Use remote state
3. Review plans carefully
4. Test in dev first
5. Keep state files secure