WEBVTT

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In the previous lectures,

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we learned about
Terraform state and its benefits.

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Terraform state
is the single source of truth

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for a Terraform to understand
what is deployed in the real world.

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However,

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there are a few things
to keep note of

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when working with state,

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and we will learn about them
in this lecture.

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State is a non-optional feature
in Terraform.

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However,

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there are a few considerations.

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First one is that,

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the state file contains
sensitive information.

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Within it,

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it contains every little detail
about our infrastructure.

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Here is an example snippet
of a state file

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for an AWS EC2 instance

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which is, essentially,
a virtual machine on the AWS cloud.

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The state file consists
of all the attributes

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for a virtual machine
that is provisioned,

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such as the allocated CPUs,

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the memory,

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operating system, all the image used,

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type and size of disks, et cetera.

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It also stores information

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such as the IP address allocated
to the VM

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and the SSH keypad used, et cetera.

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For resources such as databases,

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the state may also store
initial passwords.

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When using local state,

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the state is stored
in plain-text JSON files.

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And as you can see,

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this information can be classified
as sensitive information.

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And as a result,

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we need to make sure
that the state file

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is always stored in a secure storage.

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So,

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we have two kinds of files
in our configuration directory.

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Data from state file, that stores
state of the infrastructure

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and data from configuration files

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that we use to provision
and manage infrastructure.

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When working as a team,

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it is considered a best practice

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to store
Terraform configuration files

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in distributed
version control systems,

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such as GitHub,

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GitLab, or Bitbucket.

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However,

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owing to the sensitive nature
of the state file,

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it is not recommended to store them
in Git repositories.

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Instead,

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store the state in
remote backend systems

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such as AWS S3,

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Google Cloud Storage,

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Azure Storage,

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Terraform Cloud, et cetera.

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We will see how to work
with remote state backends

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in a dedicated section of its own,

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but for now,

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it's important to make a note
of these considerations.

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Terraform state
is a JSON data structure

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that is meant for internal use
within Terraform.

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We should never manually attempt
to edit the state files ourselves.

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However,

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there would be situations
where we may want

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to make changes to the state file.

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And in such cases,

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we should rely on
terraform state commands.

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We will cover these
in a later section of the course.