Terraform State Management

Reference entries on Terraform state, backends, remote locking, drift detection, refresh-only reconciliation, and refactoring.

State maps configuration addresses to the remote objects Terraform manages. A backend controls where that state is stored; careful state operations preserve that mapping during collaboration, drift investigation, and refactoring.

Entry Focus
State and backends State purpose, local storage, backend configuration, and security.
Remote state and locking Shared-state collaboration and backend-specific concurrency protection.
Drift and state refactoring Out-of-band changes, refresh-only mode, and moved or removed addresses.

In this section

Revised on Friday, September 11, 2026