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Using Yandex Cloud modules in Terraform

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Updated at May 7, 2025

Yandex Cloud provides a set of modules for Terraform. Terraform modules combine a number of cloud resources that should work together. Modules simplify the cloud infrastructure configuration, make it easier to reuse its blocks, and allow you to specify any parameters required for creating resources in variables.

This page explains how to enable the modules and use them to create a test infrastructure with a cloud network, three Yandex Virtual Private Cloud subnets, and a Yandex Managed Service for Kubernetes cluster.

To create your first infrastructure in Yandex Cloud using Terraform:

  1. Get your cloud ready.
  2. Install Terraform.
  3. Get the authentication data.
  4. Create a Terraform configuration file.
  5. Configure your provider.

If you no longer need the resources, delete them.

Get your cloud ready

Sign up in Yandex Cloud and create a billing account:

  1. Navigate to the management console and log in to Yandex Cloud or register a new account.
  2. On the Yandex Cloud Billing page, make sure you have a billing account linked and it has the ACTIVE or TRIAL_ACTIVE status. If you do not have a billing account, create one and link a cloud to it.

If you have an active billing account, you can navigate to the cloud page to create or select a folder for your infrastructure to operate in.

Learn more about clouds and folders.

The cost of support for the infrastructure deployed through Terraform in this tutorial includes:

Install Terraform

From a mirror

Alert

The mirror may be unavailable.

You can download a Terraform distribution for your platform from a mirror. When the download is complete, add the path to the folder with the executable to the PATH variable:

export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/terraform

From the HashiCorp website

Use one of the following methods:

Use one of the following methods:

Get the authentication credentials

Use a service account to manage the Yandex Cloud infrastructure using Terraform. It will help you flexibly configure access permissions to resources.

You can also use Terraform under your Yandex account or a federated account, but this method is less secure. For more information, see the end of this section.

  1. If you do not have the Yandex Cloud command line interface, install it.

  2. If you do not have a service account, create one:

    1. In the management console, select the folder where you want to create a service account.

    2. In the list of services, select Identity and Access Management.

    3. Click Create service account.

    4. Enter a name for the service account.

      The name format requirements are as follows:

      • It must be from 2 to 63 characters long.
      • It may contain lowercase Latin letters, numbers, and hyphens.
      • It must start with a letter and cannot end with a hyphen.

    5. Click Create.

    The folder specified when creating the CLI profile is used by default. To change the default folder, use the yc config set folder-id <folder_ID> command. You can specify a different folder using the --folder-name or --folder-id parameter.

    Run the following command to create a service account:

    yc iam service-account create --name <service_account_name>

    Where name is the service account name in the following format:

    • It must be from 2 to 63 characters long.
    • It may contain lowercase Latin letters, numbers, and hyphens.
    • It must start with a letter and cannot end with a hyphen.

    Result:

    id: ajehr0to1g8b********
folder_id: b1gv87ssvu49********
created_at: "2022-09-14T09:03:11.665153755Z"
name: sa-terraform

    To create a service account, use the ServiceAccountService/Create gRPC API call or the create REST API method for the ServiceAccount resource.

  3. Assign, to the service account, the following roles needed to manage Yandex Cloud resources:

    You can assign roles to a service account for any resources in any cloud if these resources belong to the same organization as the service account. You can also assign roles to a service account for the organization.

    To assign to a service account a role for the folder:

    1. In the management console, select the appropriate folder.
    2. Go to the Access bindings tab.
    3. Click Configure access.
    4. In the window that opens, select Service accounts.
    5. Select a service account from the list or use the search.
    6. Click Add role and select the role in the folder.
    7. Click Save.

    1. Find out the ID of the service account (the ID column) you want to assign the role to:

      yc iam service-account list

      Result:

      +----------------------+--------------+
|          ID          |     NAME     |
+----------------------+--------------+
| aje6ij7qvdhb******** | sa-terraform |
+----------------------+--------------+

    2. Assign the role for the resource to the service account:

      yc <service-name> <resource> add-access-binding <resource-name>|<resource-id> \
  --role <role-id> \
  --subject serviceAccount:<service-account-id>

      Where:

      • <service-name>: Name of the service for whose resource you want to assign the role, e.g., resource-manager.
      • <resource>: Resource category, e.g., cloud to assign a role for the entire cloud, or folder to assign a role for a folder.
      • <resource-name>: Resource name. You can specify a resource by its name or ID (cloud or folder name).
      • <resource-id>: Resource ID (cloud or folder ID).
      • <role-id>: Role being assigned, e.g., resource-manager.clouds.owner.
      • <service-account-id>: ID of the service account getting the role.

      Example:

      yc resource-manager folder add-access-binding **********9n9hi2qu --role editor --subject serviceAccount:**********qhi2qu

      Result:

      done (1s)

    To assign the service account a role for a cloud or folder, use the updateAccessBindings REST API method for the Cloud or Folder resource:

    1. Select the role to assign to the service account. You can find the description of the roles in the Yandex Identity and Access Management documentation in the Yandex Cloud role reference.

    2. Get the ID of the service accounts folder.

    3. Get an IAM token required for authorization in the Yandex Cloud API.

    4. Get a list of folder service accounts to find out their IDs:

      export FOLDER_ID=b1gvmob95yys********
export IAM_TOKEN=CggaATEVAgA...
curl \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer ${IAM_TOKEN}" \
  "https://iam.api.cloud.yandex.net/iam/v1/serviceAccounts?folderId=${FOLDER_ID}"

      Result:

      {
 "serviceAccounts": [
  {
   "id": "ajebqtreob2d********",
   "folderId": "b1gvmob95yys********",
   "createdAt": "2018-10-18T13:42:40Z",
   "name": "my-robot",
   "description": "my description"
  }
 ]
}

    5. Create the request body, e.g., in the body.json file. Set the action property to ADD and roleId to the appropriate role, such as editor, and specify the serviceAccount type and service account ID in the subject property:

      body.json:

      {
  "accessBindingDeltas": [{
    "action": "ADD",
    "accessBinding": {
      "roleId": "editor",
      "subject": {
        "id": "ajebqtreob2d********",
        "type": "serviceAccount"
      }
    }
  }]
}

    6. Assign a role to a service account. For example, for a folder with the b1gvmob95yys******** ID:

      export FOLDER_ID=b1gvmob95yys********
export IAM_TOKEN=CggaAT********
curl \
  --request POST \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer ${IAM_TOKEN}" \
  --data '@body.json' \
  "https://resource-manager.api.cloud.yandex.net/resource-manager/v1/folders/${FOLDER_ID}:updateAccessBindings"

  4. Set up the CLI profile to run operations on behalf of the service account:

    1. Create an authorized key for your service account and save the file:

      yc iam key create \
  --service-account-id <service_account_ID> \
  --folder-name <service_account_folder_name> \
  --output key.json

      Where:

      • service-account-id: Service account ID.
      • folder-name: Name of the folder in which the service account was created.
      • output: Name of the file with the authorized key.

      Result:

      id: aje8nn871qo4********
service_account_id: ajehr0to1g8********
created_at: "2022-09-14T09:11:43.479156798Z"
key_algorithm: RSA_2048

    2. Create a CLI profile to run operations on behalf of the service account. Name the profile:

      yc config profile create <profile_name>

      Result:

      Profile 'sa-terraform' created and activated

    3. Set the profile configuration:

      yc config set service-account-key key.json
yc config set cloud-id <cloud_ID>
yc config set folder-id <folder_ID>

      Where:

      • service-account-key: File with the service account authorized key.
      • cloud-id: Cloud ID.
      • folder-id: Folder ID.

  5. Add the credentials to the environment variables:

    export YC_TOKEN=$(yc iam create-token)
export YC_CLOUD_ID=$(yc config get cloud-id)
export YC_FOLDER_ID=$(yc config get folder-id)

    Where:

    • YC_TOKEN: IAM token.
    • YC_CLOUD_ID: Cloud ID.
    • YC_FOLDER_ID: Folder ID.
    $Env:YC_TOKEN=$(yc iam create-token)
$Env:YC_CLOUD_ID=$(yc config get cloud-id)
$Env:YC_FOLDER_ID=$(yc config get folder-id)

    Where:

    • YC_TOKEN: IAM token.
    • YC_CLOUD_ID: Cloud ID.
    • YC_FOLDER_ID: Folder ID.

    Note

    The IAM token lifetime does not exceed 12 hours; however, we recommend requesting it more often, such as once per hour.

Managing resources under a Yandex account or a federated account

Warning

Managing resources under a user's Yandex account or federated account is less secure than under a service account.

If you do not have the Yandex Cloud CLI yet, install and initialize it.

The folder specified when creating the CLI profile is used by default. To change the default folder, use the yc config set folder-id <folder_ID> command. You can specify a different folder using the --folder-name or --folder-id parameter.

If you use a federated account, authenticate with the CLI on behalf of the federated user.

Add the credentials to the environment variables:

export YC_TOKEN=$(yc iam create-token)
export YC_CLOUD_ID=$(yc config get cloud-id)
export YC_FOLDER_ID=$(yc config get folder-id)

Where:

  • YC_TOKEN: IAM token.
  • YC_CLOUD_ID: Cloud ID.
  • YC_FOLDER_ID: Folder ID.
$Env:YC_TOKEN=$(yc iam create-token)
$Env:YC_CLOUD_ID=$(yc config get cloud-id)
$Env:YC_FOLDER_ID=$(yc config get folder-id)

Where:

  • YC_TOKEN: IAM token.
  • YC_CLOUD_ID: Cloud ID.
  • YC_FOLDER_ID: Folder ID.

Note

The IAM token lifetime does not exceed 12 hours; however, we recommend requesting it more often, such as once per hour.

Create a Terraform configuration file

  1. Create a new directory with any name, for example, cloud-terraform. It stores the configuration files and saved states for Terraform and your infrastructure.

    Warning

    Each configuration must be in a separate directory.

  2. Create a configuration file with the .tf extension in this directory, such as main.tf.

Configure your provider

Note

These settings apply to Terraform 0.13 and higher. We recommend using the latest stable version of Terraform.

  1. If you previously configured a provider from the HashiCorp registry, save its settings:

    mv ~/.terraformrc ~/.terraformrc.old

    mv $env:APPDATA/terraform.rc $env:APPDATA/terraform.rc.old

  2. Specify the source the provider will be installed from.

    Open the Terraform CLI configuration file:

    nano ~/.terraformrc

    Note

    The .terraformrc file must be in the user's home root folder, e.g., /home/user/ or /User/user/.

    Open the Terraform CLI configuration file named terraform.rc in your user's %APPDATA% folder.

    To find out the absolute path to the %APPDATA% folder, run the echo %APPDATA% command for cmd or the $env:APPDATA command for PowerShell.

    Add the following section to the file:

    provider_installation {
  network_mirror {
    url = "https://terraform-mirror.yandexcloud.net/"
    include = ["registry.terraform.io/*/*"]
  }
  direct {
    exclude = ["registry.terraform.io/*/*"]
  }
}

    For more information about setting up mirrors, see the documentation.

  3. Add the following sections at the top of the .tf configuration file:

    terraform {
  required_providers {
    yandex = {
      source = "yandex-cloud/yandex"
    }
  }
  required_version = ">= 0.13"
}

provider "yandex" {
  zone = "<default_availability_zone>"
}

    Where:

    • source: Provider's global source address.
    • required_version: Minimum Terraform version the provider is compatible with.
    • provider: Provider name.
    • zone: Availability zone where all cloud resources will be created by default.

  4. Run the terraform init command in the folder containing the .tf configuration file. This command initializes the providers specified in the configuration files and allows you to work with the provider resources and data sources.

If the provider installation failed, create a support request stating provider name and version.

If you used the .terraform.lock.hcl file, prior to the initialization, run the terraform providers lock command specifying the URL of the mirror to upload the provider from and the platforms the configuration will run on:

terraform providers lock -net-mirror=https://terraform-mirror.yandexcloud.net -platform=<platform_1_name> -platform=<platform_2_name> yandex-cloud/yandex

Where:

  • -net-mirror: Address of the mirror to upload the provider from.
  • -platform: Platforms to use the configuration on. The possible values include:
    • windows_amd64: 64-bit Windows
    • linux_amd64: 64-bit Linux
    • darwin_arm64: 64-bit macOS

If you used the Terraform modules, first run terraform init, then delete the lock file. After that, run the terraform providers lock command.

For more information about the terraform providers lock command, see the Terraform documentation.

Enable the virtual network management module

Add the terraform-yc-vpc module to the configuration. You can use this module to manage your cloud network infrastructure, including networks, subnets, gateways, and other Virtual Private Cloud objects. Create a test network with three subnets in different availability zones:

module "yc-vpc" {
  source              = "github.com/terraform-yc-modules/terraform-yc-vpc.git"
  network_name        = "test-module-network"
  network_description = "Test network created with module"
  private_subnets = [{
    name           = "subnet-1"
    zone           = "ru-central1-a"
    v4_cidr_blocks = ["10.10.0.0/24"]
  },
  {
    name           = "subnet-2"
    zone           = "ru-central1-b"
    v4_cidr_blocks = ["10.11.0.0/24"]
  },
  {
    name           = "subnet-3"
    zone           = "ru-central1-d"
    v4_cidr_blocks = ["10.12.0.0/24"]
  }
  ]
}

Enable Managed Service for Kubernetes

Add the terraform-yc-vpc module to the configuration. Also, add the Managed Service for Kubernetes cluster configuration with a highly available master and two node groups:

module "kube" {
  source     = "github.com/terraform-yc-modules/terraform-yc-kubernetes.git"
  network_id = "${module.yc-vpc.vpc_id}"

  master_locations  = [
    for s in module.yc-vpc.private_subnets:
      {
        zone      = s.zone,
        subnet_id = s.subnet_id
      }
    ]

  master_maintenance_windows = [
    {
      day        = "monday"
      start_time = "23:00"
      duration   = "3h"
    }
  ]

  node_groups = {
    "yc-k8s-ng-01"  = {
      description   = "Kubernetes nodes group 01"
      fixed_scale   = {
        size = 3
      }
      node_labels   = {
        role        = "worker-01"
        environment = "testing"
      }
    },

    "yc-k8s-ng-02"  = {
      description   = "Kubernetes nodes group 02"
      auto_scale    = {
        min         = 2
        max         = 4
        initial     = 2
      }
      node_labels   = {
        role        = "worker-02"
        environment = "dev"
      }

      max_expansion   = 1
      max_unavailable = 1
    }
  }
}

Check and format the configuration files

  1. Check the configuration using this command:

    terraform validate

    If the configuration is valid, you will get this message:

    Success! The configuration is valid.

  2. Format the configuration files in the current folder and subfolders:

    terraform fmt

    Result:

    main.tf
variables.tf

Create resources

  1. After checking the configuration, run the command:

    terraform plan

    The terminal will display a list of resources with parameters. This is a test step; no resources will be created. If the configuration contains any errors, Terraform will point them out.

    Alert

    You will be charged for all the resources created with Terraform. Check the pricing plan carefully.

  2. To create resources, run the command:

    terraform apply

  3. Confirm creating the resources: type yes in the terminal and press Enter.

    Terraform will create all the required resources and the terminal will display the IP addresses of the created VMs. You can check the new resources and their configuration using the management console.

How to delete the resources you created

To delete the resources created with Terraform:

  1. Run this command:

    terraform destroy

    Alert

    Terraform will delete all the resources you created in the current configuration, such as clusters, networks, subnets, and VMs.

    After the command is executed, the terminal will display a list of resources to be deleted.

  2. Type yes and press Enter.

See also

Previous
Locking Terraform states using Managed Service for YDB
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Creating a VM and an instance group with a Container Optimized Image using Terraform