Terraform Backends

Backend Configuration
A backend defines where Terraform stores its state data files.

Terraform Backend is a configuration option in Terraform that allows you to store and manage the state of your infrastructure in a remote or local location. The backend is responsible for storing the state file and providing an interface for reading and writing state data.

Available Backends
1.local: The local backend stores state on the local filesystem

terraform {
  backend "local" {
    path = "relative/path/to/terraform.tfstate"
  }
}

create a file - backend.tf and add the below to save the state file locally

terraform {
  backend "local" {
    path = "C:/srinivas/terraform.tfstate"
  }
}

2.S3 :

• Stores the terraform state as a given key in a given bucket on Amazon S3.
• This backend also supports state locking and consistency checking via Dynamo DB, which can be enabled by setting the dynamodb_table field to an existing DynamoDB table name.
• A single DynamoDB table can be used to lock multiple remote state files.
• create a file backend.tf and keep the below mentioned code

terraform {
  backend "s3" {
    bucket = "bucket_name"
    key    = "myproject/terraform.tfstate"
    region = "eu-west-1"
  }
}

Note : You need to replace bucket_name to desired bucket and
"myproject" to the desired folder and terraform.tfstate to be replaced with the desired state file name

3.azurerm : Stores the state as a Blob with the given Key within the Blob Container within the Blob Storage Account.

When authenticating using the Azure CLI or a Service Principal (either with a Client Certificate or a Client Secret):

terraform {
  backend "azurerm" {
    resource_group_name  = "terraform-training"
    storage_account_name = "training2024"
    container_name       = "tfstate"
    key                  = "prod.terraform.tfstate"
  }
}

Note : Replace resource group name ,storage account name , container name and key based on your requirement.

Some more backend types in terraform

• remote
• consul
• cos
• gcs
• http
• kubernetes
• oss
• pg

Conclusion : Discussed about terraform backends and will further add more about other backends. Any needs one github samples let me know in the comments will share the github repo link

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