Transitioning Terraform State: Local to Remote Made Easy

PREREQUISITES FOR THIS PROJECT

• An active Azure subscription

• Visual Studio Code with the following Extensions: Azure CLI, Terraform, GitHub

• A GitHub account

• A Terraform Cloud account. You can sign up using this link https://app.terraform.io/public/signup/account

STEP 1: Install Terraform on your machine

To do this, go to the official Terraform website, Install | Terraform | HashiCorp Developer and download the package manager for the OS you are using.

After downloading, extract the folder.

After extracting the folder, open the extracted file and select terraform, right-click and select copy as path

On your PC, search for edit the system environment and click open. Next, click Advanced, then Environment variables

Paste the Terraform path file that you copied earlier in the place where the arrow is pointed and click OK.

Confirm that you have successfully installed Terraform on Windows by opening the command prompt and run the command terraform --version

Note that you can get the installation guide for other OS on Terraform official website.

Step 2: Install Terraform Extension on VS Code

Open a window on VS Code, go to Extensions, type Terraform in the search bar and Install Terraform

Step 3: Create a repository on GitHub

Create a repository, give the repository a name, and click Create Repository.

For this project, I created a folder on my PC named Terra_form and I ran the commands below on Git Bash, as seen in the diagram below, to create the files I needed.

Next, open a new window on VS Code - File - Open Folder - Select Folder

Step 4: Select a Provider

For this project, I am using the Azure provider. For this, you go to Browse Providers | Terraform Registry. Select Azure - Use Provider.

After copying the code, open VS Code - main.tf and paste the code you just copied.

Next, create all resources that you need e.g. Resource group, virtual network, subnet etc.

For the purpose of this demonstration, I created a resource group named demo_rg in the UK South region. I also created a virtual network and subnet. You can create as many resources as you want.

To save, press Ctrl + S.

Step 5: Login to Azure

To do this, you can us az login or az login --tenant <tenant id>. To get your tenant id, open Azure portal - Microsoft Entra ID - Overview - Tenant ID

Step 6: Initialize, Plan and Apply to Terraform

Run terraform init to initialize terraform

Next, you plan the terraform configuration by running terraform plan. From the diagram below, you can see the resources that are created on Azure using Terraform.

I ran terraform plan -out=main.tfplan to get the result seen in the diagram.

Also, you would notice some changes in VS Code after running the above command as seen below.

Next, apply the configuration by running command terraform apply main.tfplan

You can confirm the creation of your resource on the Azure portal as shown below.

Do not forget to use the command terraform destroy to delete all the resources created.

NOTE: You do not have to run the terraform destroy command if you want to migrate from Terraform state to Terraform Cloud

When prompted with Enter a value, type Yes.

Step 7: Migrate from Terraform State to Terraform Cloud

To migrate to the Terraform Cloud, you need to have a Terraform account. You can sign up through https://app.terraform.io/public/signup/account.

After signing in with your GitHub account after authentication has been established, go to Account Settings - Organizations - Create Organization. Give the organization a name and select Create organization.

Next, you create a workspace by selecting the organization you just created. Go to Manage - Workspaces - Create a Workspace - Choose the one most suitable for your project. For my project, I chose CLI-Driven Workflow since I am working with Terraform using CLI.

Give your workspace a unique name, select the project, give a description of the workspace and select Create.

Go to the terminal and run the command terraform login

Terraform opens a web browser for you to generate token

Copy the token as shown below

Paste the token you have copied but note that the token won’t be visible.

Step 8: Set up cloud integration

Next, you add a code block to your Terraform configuration files to set up the cloud integration. To do this, go to Workspaces - Overview - Example code. Copy the code as shown below and paste the code in the main.tf file.