Question
You are implementing Terraform in a collaborative team environment to manage AWS infrastructure. Your team has a policy to ensure that different development branches can work independently without interfering with each other’s infrastructure changes. This includes isolating state, allowing team members to test changes safely, and maintaining an isolated environment per branch or feature.
Which of the following approaches is the BEST way to ensure safe and independent Terraform state management for each team member’s development branch?
Correct Answer: D
Explanation:
The correct choice is Option D because:
- Terraform Workspaces Isolate State:
- Terraform’s workspaces feature allows developers to work with isolated state environments, making it ideal for branching strategies or testing changes independently.
- Safe State Management:
- Each workspace maintains its own state file. This prevents conflicts between team members’ infrastructure changes during parallel testing or development.
- Supports Collaboration Without Overlap:
- Using individual workspaces enables different developers to work on different branches, infrastructure changes, or feature sets without impacting each other.
Why Other Options Are Incorrect
Option A:
Storing Terraform state locally on each developer’s machine will lead to significant problems. This creates state inconsistencies, lack of collaboration, and risks of accidental overwrites when changes are applied.
Option B:
Using a shared S3 backend without isolated mechanisms allows changes by one developer to overwrite or conflict with others’ changes. This creates risks, especially for testing or parallel feature development.
Option C:
While remote_state
can be useful for sharing read-only state data, it doesn’t solve the issue of developers testing isolated changes safely. Manual interventions would still be necessary, leading to inefficient workflows.
Correct Answer: D
Explanation:
The correct choice is Option D because:
- Terraform Workspaces Isolate State:
- Terraform’s workspaces feature allows developers to work with isolated state environments, making it ideal for branching strategies or testing changes independently.
- Safe State Management:
- Each workspace maintains its own state file. This prevents conflicts between team members’ infrastructure changes during parallel testing or development.
- Supports Collaboration Without Overlap:
- Using individual workspaces enables different developers to work on different branches, infrastructure changes, or feature sets without impacting each other.
Why Other Options Are Incorrect
Option A:
Storing Terraform state locally on each developer’s machine will lead to significant problems. This creates state inconsistencies, lack of collaboration, and risks of accidental overwrites when changes are applied.
Option B:
Using a shared S3 backend without isolated mechanisms allows changes by one developer to overwrite or conflict with others’ changes. This creates risks, especially for testing or parallel feature development.
Option C:
While remote_state
can be useful for sharing read-only state data, it doesn’t solve the issue of developers testing isolated changes safely. Manual interventions would still be necessary, leading to inefficient workflows.