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DevOps & Automation · Intermediate

Remote Backend

A Terraform backend that stores state remotely, such as in S3, Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud Storage, or HCP Terraform, enabling team sharing and locking.

Definition

State locking prevents concurrent operations from corrupting state. The S3 backend now supports native lockfiles (use_lockfile), replacing the older DynamoDB lock table; azurerm uses blob leases.

Example

backend "s3" { bucket = "tf-state", key = "prod/net.tfstate", region = "us-east-1", use_lockfile = true }

Exam tip

Locking prevents simultaneous applies; force-unlock only when a lock is truly stale.

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