Treating Terraform state as part of your infrastructure

Terraform state helps track the relationship between configuration and deployed resources. Its storage and access controls should be part of the infrastructure design.

Protect the information it contains

State and saved plans can contain sensitive values. Marking a value as sensitive controls its display; it does not automatically keep it out of state. Review HashiCorp's sensitive data guidance for the options and their requirements.

Plan access and recovery

Choose an appropriate remote backend, review permissions and understand its locking and recovery capabilities. Keep state and plan files out of source control and handle downloaded copies carefully.

Set sensible deployment boundaries

Separate configuration and state around ownership, dependencies and the impact of a change. Review destructive operations and agree how they are approved.

These decisions make handover easier and help the team understand which infrastructure each deployment controls.