6.2. Remote State

Step 6.2.1: Create a storage

The Azure storage account and storage container to store the Terraform state are not managed by Terraform; it is a chicken and egg problem we resolve by using the az CLI as followed:

export NAME=YOUR_USERNAME
export ACCOUNT=tfstate$RANDOM

az group create --location westeurope --name rg-terraform-$NAME
az storage account create --name $ACCOUNT --resource-group rg-terraform-$NAME
az storage container create --resource-group rg-terraform-$NAME --account-name $ACCOUNT --name terraform-state --public-access off --auth-mode login
echo $ACCOUNT

Note: Please replace YOUR_USERNAME with the username assigned to you for this workshop.

Step 6.2.2: Configure the Terraform backend

Add the following content to the start of main.tf:

terraform {
  backend "azurerm" {}
}

Create a new file named config/dev_backend.tfvars and add the following content:

subscription_id      = "c1b34118-6a8f-4348-88c2-b0b1f7350f04"
resource_group_name  = "rg-terraform-YOUR_USERNAME"
storage_account_name = "YOUR_ACCOUNT"
container_name       = "terraform-state"
key                  = "dev.tfstate"

Note: Please replace YOUR_USERNAME with the username assigned to you for this workshop and YOUR_ACCOUNT with the value of the $ACCOUNT variable.

Now run

terraform init -backend-config=config/dev_backend.tfvars

Terraform will detect that a local state already exists and asks if you would like to migrate the local state to the new remote state; enter yes:

Initializing the backend...
Do you want to copy existing state to the new backend?
  Pre-existing state was found while migrating the previous "local" backend to the
  newly configured "azurerm" backend. No existing state was found in the newly
  configured "azurerm" backend. Do you want to copy this state to the new "azurerm"
  backend? Enter "yes" to copy and "no" to start with an empty state.

  Enter a value: yes
...

Explanation

The Azure storage account is another resource which requires a global unique name. We therefore prefix and randomise the name.