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Deploying Velda using terraform

Follow this guide to deploy a new Velda cluster in various cloud providers. It should only take a few minutes.

Prerequisites

  • Choose your cloud provider, identify the VPC subnet.
  • Terraform installed. Check out the terraform page to download terraform.
  • Permissions to apply the change. You likely need owner privilege for the initial deployment, because new roles are created for the Velda controller to create/delete instances.

Set up

See available terraform modules

Google cloud

mkdir velda-deploy && cd velda-deploy
curl -o main.tf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/velda-io/velda-terraform/refs/heads/main/gcp/examples/simple.tf
More examples

AWS

mkdir velda-deploy && cd velda-deploy
curl -o main.tf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/velda-io/velda-terraform/refs/heads/main/aws/examples/simple.tf
More examples

Nebius

Check out examples

Azure

Check out definition. More details to follow.

Apply the change

Make necessary changes to the terraform settings, based on the required variables of the provider. For most cases, you need to define the resource project, subnet and pools. 

terraform init
terraform apply

Controller setup

Terraform will create a controller instance, and you may find the IP from your cloud console or terraform output.

You can access the server through the IP and the SSH keys provided when provisioning the instance.

The following users are available for you to connect to the controller.

  • velda-admin: User with sudo access, this is the user to manage the entire cluster or access the controller directly. Accessible with admin key.
  • velda: Login user, use that to access velda instance directly. Use access-key to connect to it.
  • velda_jump: The jump-proxy for forwarding when connecting from the CLI. Used if you would like the agent nodes not exposed through public IP. Accessible with the access-key.

Initialize your first instance

ssh velda-admin@[controller-ip]

# Create a new instance from a container image, e.g. ubuntu:24.04
# You can install dependencies later in your instance
velda instance create -d [docker-image] [instance-name]
# Example
velda instance create -d ubuntu:24.04 first

Connect to your first instance

Easiest approach is to use velda user to login, and set the VELDA_INSTANCE. 

ssh -o SetEnv=VELDA_INSTANCE=first velda@[controller-ip]

For other options, check connection guide