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GCP Enterprise Onboarding Guide

This is a start-from-scratch guide to enterprise-tier Google Cloud onboarding. It runs from registering Cloud Identity and initialising your GCP Organization, through network design, centralised log management and security product rollout, to Infrastructure as Code bootstrapping — covering every governance decision an enterprise typically faces when adopting GCP in earnest.

Every chapter:

  • Cites official sources. Content is written from official Google Cloud documentation (the Architecture Center, the Security Foundations Blueprint, individual product docs), with links back to the originals wherever a claim matters — nothing here is written from memory.
  • Ships with applicable Terraform. Wherever a chapter has an implementation component, it links to the matching Terraform sub-project in the GitHub repository, ready for terraform init/plan/apply.
  • Explains trade-offs, not just steps. Each chapter covers the why and the what breaks if you skip this, not only the how — this guide is written for people who have to make the decision, not just follow a checklist.

Who this is for​

  • Cloud engineers/SREs setting up an enterprise-grade GCP environment for the first time
  • Consultants who need to explain GCP governance architecture and Terraform automation to clients
  • Technical leads who want to know which governance guardrails to put in place beyond "does it work"

Start reading​

Start from 1. Verify domain & initialise Cloud Identity, or jump straight to whichever chapter you're stuck on:

Source code and Terraform modules​

The full source behind this guide — Terraform modules, policy catalogues, methodology write-ups — lives at github.com/terensy/gcp-onboarding-workflow. Clone it directly, or open an issue.