hands-on lab

Exploring Terraform State

Difficulty: Beginner
Duration: Up to 40 minutes
Students: 3,458
Rating: 4.6/5
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Description

Terraform uses a system called Terraform State to keep track of resources managed and deployed through Terraform. This is a critical concept to understand as a Terraform infrastructure developer because Terraform state will always need to be kept in mind when architecting solutions. The state file acts as a database for mapping resources in AWS to the Terraform configuration file. It allows Terraform to have a declarative approach when it comes to infrastructure and provides performance boosts with large-scale infrastructure automation. 

In this lab, you will learn how Terraform keeps track of the resources that it manages through the Terraform state.

Learning objectives

Upon completion of this beginner-level lab, you will be able to:

  • Understand how Terraform state works
  • Create, update, and restore a terraform.tfstate file

Intended audience

This lab is intended for:

  • Individuals studying to take the HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate exam
  • Anyone interested in learning how to use Terraform to manage Cloud Service Providers

Prerequisites

You should be familiar with:

  • Cloud Services
  • DevOps

The following course can be used to fulfill the prerequisites:

Updates

November 15th, 2023 - Lab updated to utilize CodeTour IDE

April 24th, 2023 - Resolved IDE delay

October 27th, 2022 - Updated instructions for clarity

March 28th, 2022 - Updated instructions

Environment before

Environment after

Covered topics

Lab steps

Exploring Terraform State