59 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
59 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
---
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layout: "docs"
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page_title: "Remote State"
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sidebar_current: "docs-state-remote"
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description: |-
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Terraform can store the state remotely, making it easier to version and work with in a team.
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---
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# Remote State
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By default, Terraform stores state locally in a file named "terraform.tfstate".
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Because this file must exist, it makes working with Terraform in a team
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complicated since it is a frequent source of merge conflicts. Remote state
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helps alleviate these issues.
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With remote state, Terraform stores the state in a remote store. Terraform
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supports storing state in [Atlas](https://atlas.hashicorp.com),
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[Consul](https://www.consul.io), S3, and more.
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You can begin using remote state from the beginning with flags to the
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[init](/docs/commands/init.html) command, or you can migrate an existing
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local state to remote state using the
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[remote config](/docs/commands/remote-config.html) command. You can also
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use the remote config to disable remote state and move back to local
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state.
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## Delegation and Teamwork
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Remote state gives you more than just easier version control and
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safer storage. It also allows you to delegate the
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[outputs](/docs/configuration/outputs.html) to other teams. This allows
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your infrastructure to be more easily broken down into components that
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multiple teams can access.
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Put another way, remote state also allows teams to share infrastructure
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resources in a read-only way.
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For example, a core infrastructure team can handle building the core
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machines, networking, etc. and can expose some information to other
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teams to run their own infrastructure. As a more specific example with AWS:
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you can expose things such as VPC IDs, subnets, NAT instance IDs, etc. through
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remote state and have other Terraform states consume that.
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For example usage see the [terraform_remote_state](/docs/providers/terraform/r/remote_state.html) resource.
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## Locking and Teamwork
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Remote state currently **does not** lock regions of your infrastructure
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to allow parallel modification using Terraform. Therefore, you must still
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collaborate with teammates to safely run Terraform.
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[Atlas by HashiCorp](https://atlas.hashicorp.com) is a commercial offering
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that does safely allow parallel Terraform runs and handles infrastructure
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locking for you.
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In the future, we'd like to extend the remote state system to allow some
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minimal locking functionality, but it is a difficult problem without a
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central system that we currently aren't focused on solving.
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