Configure Google Service Account

This doc will demonstrate how to set up a Google service account that can be used by Terraform to execute Jenkins X GKE Module

💡 This doc has been designed to assist in performing the demonstration through copying and pasting each block of code into a shell terminal.

To execute the commands listed in your local bash shell will require the Google gcloud tool and Cloud SDK and the JQ command-line JSON processor.

To execute the commands listed in Google Cloud Shell does not require any additiobnal software installed.

Service account privileges

In order to build your GKE environment with Terraform using a service account, the following are the service accounts minimal role requirements:

  • roles/container.admin
  • roles/editor
  • roles/iam.serviceAccountAdmin
  • roles/iam.serviceAccountKeyAdmin
  • roles/resourcemanager.projectIamAdmin
  • roles/storage.admin

If the service account needs to access a separate project to manage an apex domain then an additional role setting is required for the separate project.

  • roles/dns.admin

Create service account and assign roles

The first step is to create a new service account (APP_NAME) and to assign the roles.

💡 If you are using a local terminal, prior to executing the following commands, in the local terminal log into GCP (gcloud auth login) with an ID that has the necessary privileges (i.e. Owner) and set the appropriate project (gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID). . Always perform all commands in the same local terminal session to preserve dependent variables that are created.

If you are using Google cloud shell, you should be logged into the GCP console with the necessary project selected (MYPROJECT) and the terminal window opened. Inside the terminal, run the gcloud config list to check the envrionment availability.

First set an IAM name (required, minimum 6 characters and MUST be all lowercase):

read -p "IAM name (i.e. tftest ) : " IAMNAME

With an IAM Name defined, create the service account and assign the roles:

MYPROJECT=`gcloud config get-value project`
MY_GCP_SA=${IAMNAME}@${MYPROJECT}.iam.gserviceaccount.com
gcloud iam service-accounts create ${IAMNAME} --description "My SA" --display-name "${IAMNAME}" --project ${MYPROJECT} 
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding ${MYPROJECT} --member serviceAccount:${MY_GCP_SA} --role roles/container.admin 
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding ${MYPROJECT} --member serviceAccount:${MY_GCP_SA} --role roles/storage.admin 
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding ${MYPROJECT} --member serviceAccount:${MY_GCP_SA} --role roles/editor 
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding ${MYPROJECT} --member serviceAccount:${MY_GCP_SA} --role roles/resourcemanager.projectIamAdmin 
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding ${MYPROJECT} --member serviceAccount:${MY_GCP_SA} --role roles/iam.serviceAccountAdmin 
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding ${MYPROJECT} --member serviceAccount:${MY_GCP_SA} --role roles/iam.serviceAccountKeyAdmin 

If the environment uses external DNS and has the Apex domain records under a different project, assign to the service account ($MY_GCP_SA) the necessary role to manage DNS under the Apex project ($APEXPROJECT).

💡 If you are not using a separate Apex project, proceed to CLI display commands.

read -p "Apex Project (if none leave blank) : " APEXPROJECT
[[ ! -z "$APEXPROJECT" ]] && gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding ${APEXPROJECT} --member serviceAccount:${MY_GCP_SA} --role roles/dns.admin || echo "No project"

CLI display commands

To display the roles assigned to the service account use the following commands;

gcloud projects get-iam-policy ${MYPROJECT} --flatten="bindings[].members" --format='table(bindings.role)' --filter="bindings.members:${MY_GCP_SA}"
[[ ! -z "$APEXPROJECT" ]] && gcloud projects get-iam-policy ${APEXPROJECT} --flatten="bindings[].members"  --format='table(bindings.role)' --filter="bindings.members:${MY_GCP_SA}"

Create and assign service account key

Create the service account key into a json file and assign Google application credentials variable (GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS) so that it can be used by Terraform.

gcloud iam service-accounts keys create ~/${IAMNAME}_key.${MYPROJECT}.json --iam-account ${MY_GCP_SA} --project ${MYPROJECT}
eval export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=~/${IAMNAME}_key.${MYPROJECT}.json
env | grep GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS

💡 If you want the CLI to use the service account credentials, which may be suitable for debugging, use the following gloud auth command, otherwise proceed to Clean Up step.

gcloud auth activate-service-account ${MY_GCP_SA} --key-file ~/${IAMNAME}_key.${MYPROJECT}.json --project ${MYPROJECT}

Clean up

The following Google CLI commands will remove the roles and service account.

gcloud projects remove-iam-policy-binding ${MYPROJECT} --member serviceAccount:${MY_GCP_SA} --role roles/container.admin 
gcloud projects remove-iam-policy-binding ${MYPROJECT} --member serviceAccount:${MY_GCP_SA} --role roles/storage.admin 
gcloud projects remove-iam-policy-binding ${MYPROJECT} --member serviceAccount:${MY_GCP_SA} --role roles/editor 
gcloud projects remove-iam-policy-binding ${MYPROJECT} --member serviceAccount:${MY_GCP_SA} --role roles/resourcemanager.projectIamAdmin 
gcloud projects remove-iam-policy-binding ${MYPROJECT} --member serviceAccount:${MY_GCP_SA} --role roles/iam.serviceAccountAdmin 
gcloud projects remove-iam-policy-binding ${MYPROJECT} --member serviceAccount:${MY_GCP_SA} --role roles/iam.serviceAccountKeyAdmin 
[[ ! -z "$APEXPROJECT" ]] && gcloud projects remove-iam-policy-binding ${APEXPROJECT} --member serviceAccount:${MY_GCP_SA} --role roles/dns.admin 
gcloud iam service-accounts delete ${MY_GCP_SA} --project ${MYPROJECT}

Last modified January 6, 2022: docs: small typo (e850a21455)