How to setup terraform with remote state S3

Terraform stores the state locally by default in the local project directory but we can also store this state remotely using the terraform backend.

Vasanth Jagadeesan

Enterprise solution architect

How to setup terraform with remote state s3 - mobilelabs.in

Terraform is developed by HashiCorp, it uses HCL language to build the infrastructure using the code. In this tutorial we are going to see how to setup the terraform and setup remote config state with AWS S3.

Terraform stores the state locally by default in the local project directory but we can also store this state remotely using the terraform backend. It supports all leading cloud storage like AWS S3, GCS Bucket, Azure Storage, and etc.

Though is setup is optional its is always recommended to use remote state as the best practice like keeping sensitive information off the disk and protects the state corruption with locks.

What you need to start

AWS CLI
Terraform
VS Code
S3 bucket for the storing remote state

Note: This article requires basic knowledge about AWS Infrastructure

Lets create main.tf file with the following content

provider "aws" {
  profile    = "default"
  region     = "ap-south-1"
}

resource "aws_instance" "mobilelabs" {
  ami           = "ami-040c7ad0a93be494e"
  instance_type = "t2.micro"
}

Here we are specifing the aws profile which is will default most of the time, you can specify the aws region in region field.

Amazon Machine Image(ami) is the operating system installed in the EC2 instance, This can be configured in ami field and instance type in the instance_type.

Now let's setup the AWS S3 backend to terraform state, create backend.tf file with the following content.

terraform {
  backend "s3" {
    region = "ap-south-1"
    bucket = "mobilelabs.in"
    key = "mobilelabs.in/development/state.tfstate"
    encrypt = true    #AES-256 encryption
  }
}