terraform/website/source/docs/commands/remote-config.html.markdown

layout	page_title	sidebar_current	description
docs	Command: remote config	docs-commands-remote-config	The `terraform remote config` command is used to configure Terraform to make use of remote state storage, change remote storage configuration, or to disable it.

Command: remote config

The terraform remote config command is used to configure use of remote state storage. By default, Terraform persists its state only to a local disk. When remote state storage is enabled, Terraform will automatically fetch the latest state from the remote server when necessary and if any updates are made, the newest state is persisted back to the remote server. In this mode, users do not need to durably store the state using version control or shared storaged.

Usage

Usage: terraform remote config [options]

The remote config command can be used to enable remote storage, change configuration or disable the use of remote storage. Terraform supports multiple types of storage backends, specified by using the -backend flag. By default, Atlas is assumed to be the storage backend. Each backend expects different, configuration arguments documented below.

When remote storage is enabled, an existing local state file can be migrated. By default, remote config will look for the "terraform.tfstate" file, but that can be specified by the -state flag. If no state file exists, a blank state will be configured.

When enabling remote storage, use the -backend-config flag to set the required configuration variables as documented below. See the example below this section for more details.

When remote storage is disabled, the existing remote state is migrated to a local file. This defaults to the -state path during restore.

The following backends are supported:

• Atlas - Stores the state in Atlas. Requires the name and access_token variables. The address variable can optionally be provided.

• Consul - Stores the state in the KV store at a given path. Requires the path variable. The address and access_token variables can optionally be provided. Address is assumed to be the local agent if not provided.

• S3 - Stores the state as a given key in a given bucket on Amazon S3. Requires the bucket and key variables. Supports and honors the standard AWS environment variables AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY and AWS_DEFAULT_REGION. These can optionally be provided as parameters in the access_key, secret_key and region variables respectively, but passing credentials this way is not recommended since they will be included in cleartext inside the persisted state.

• HTTP - Stores the state using a simple REST client. State will be fetched via GET, updated via POST, and purged with DELETE. Requires the address variable.

The command-line flags are all optional. The list of available flags are:

• -backend=Atlas - The remote backend to use. Must be one of the above supported backends.

• -backend-config="k=v" - Specify a configuration variable for a backend. This is how you set the required variables for the backends above.

• -backup=path - Path to backup the existing state file before modifying. Defaults to the "-state" path with ".backup" extension. Set to "-" to disable backup.

• -disable - Disables remote state management and migrates the state to the -state path.

• -pull=true - Controls if the remote state is pulled before disabling or after enabling. This defaults to true to ensure the latest state is available under both conditions.

• -state=path - Path to read state. Defaults to "terraform.tfstate" unless remote state is enabled.

Example: Consul

The example below will push your remote state to Consul. Note that for this example, it would go to the public Consul demo. In practice, you should use your own private Consul server:

$ terraform remote config \
    -backend=consul \
    -backend-config="address=demo.consul.io:80" \
    -backend-config="path=tf"