linux-cloud-router/examples/gcp/README.md

GCP example

Deploys vpn-router on a GCE instance: a two-NIC router (external/WAN and internal/protected, each its own VPC network), a demo protected workload subnet in the internal network routed through it, and cloud-init that installs and configures the package on first boot. See the repository's top-level README for what the package itself does, and ../azure/ for the equivalent Azure example - the two share the same design.

Prerequisites

• A GCP project and credentials Terraform can pick up (gcloud auth application-default login or a service account).
• An SSH key pair for admin_ssh_public_key.
• A build of the vpn-router package published to the repository at repo_url (default: the project's Gitea Debian registry). See ../../debian-package for build.sh/publish.sh. That repository must allow anonymous reads, since the router pulls the package with no credentials configured.

Usage

cp terraform.tfvars.example terraform.tfvars
$EDITOR terraform.tfvars
export TF_VAR_psk='change-me'   # keep secrets out of tracked files

platform = gcp and mode = auto are hard-coded into the cloud-init template call in router.tf: the router has exactly two NICs, and on GCP the system default route always goes out NIC0 (the external one here) while a secondary NIC only reaches its own subnet unless policy-routed - exactly the case mode = auto is designed to detect reliably. See the top-level README's "What mode decides" section.

Unlike the Azure example, ext and internal are two separate VPC networks (GCP instances attach one NIC per network), with int and workload as two subnets inside the same internal network. GCP routes apply network-wide rather than per-subnet, so routes.tf needs no separate subnet association - the route in internal already covers both subnets.

Verifying

ssh <admin_username>@$(terraform output -raw router_public_ip)
systemctl status vpn-router-setup
swanctl --list-sas

Set deploy_workload_vm = true and re-apply to add a VM on the workload subnet (no public IP - reach it via the router or IAP) for confirming that its traffic to remote_cidrs actually flows through the router.