Describe the Default Local Back-end
Learn where and how Terraform stores its state data.
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What is a backend?
Terraform needs a location to store its state data, which is called a back-end. In the absence of an alternate configuration, it stores the state on the local filesystem where the configuration is stored. Let’s examine the typical folder structure for an example configuration:
.
├── .terraform
├── main.tf
└── terraform.tfstate
This Terraform configuration has been initialized and run through terraform plan
and terraform apply
. As a result, the .terraform
directory holds the plugins used by the configuration, and the terraform.tfstate
file holds the state data about the configuration.
The location of the local state file can be altered using the command line flag -state=statefile
for commands like terraform plan
and terraform apply
.
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