Terraform Tutorial — State Practice Exercises

Practice inspecting, modifying, and managing Terraform state.

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Exercise 1: State File Location

Task: You run terraform apply in a project with no backend configuration. Where is the state file stored and what is it called?

Answer

The state file is stored locally in the project directory as terraform.tfstate. A backup of the previous state is saved as terraform.tfstate.backup.

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Exercise 2: Rename a Resource

Task: You renamed aws_instance.web to aws_instance.app_server in your .tf file. What command prevents Terraform from destroying the old instance and creating a new one?

Answer

$ terraform state mv aws_instance.web aws_instance.app_server

This updates the state to reflect the new name without touching the real resource.

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Exercise 3: Import Existing Resource

Task: Your teammate created an S3 bucket company-logs-bucket manually in the AWS console. Write the steps to bring it under Terraform management.

Answer

1. Write the resource block in your .tf file:

resource "aws_s3_bucket" "logs" {
  bucket = "company-logs-bucket"
}

1. Import the resource:

$ terraform import aws_s3_bucket.logs company-logs-bucket

1. Run plan to see what attributes need to be added:

$ terraform plan

1. Update the .tf file until terraform plan shows no changes.

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Exercise 4: State Security

Task: List three reasons why the state file should never be committed to Git.

Answer

1. Contains secrets — passwords, API keys, tokens are stored in plaintext
2. Concurrency issues — two developers pulling different versions cause conflicts
3. Data exposure — anyone with repo access can read sensitive infrastructure details (IPs, ARNs, configurations)

Always use a remote backend with encryption and restrict access through IAM policies.

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Chapter Summary

In this chapter, you learned:

• State is a JSON file mapping your config to real cloud resources
• State stores resource IDs, attributes, outputs, and metadata
• Locking prevents concurrent modifications (DynamoDB for S3 backend)
• State commands: list, show, mv, rm, import, pull, push
• Best practices: remote backend, encryption, versioning, never edit manually, never commit to Git

Next up: Workflow — mastering init, plan, apply, and destroy.

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