Azure Storage backend in Terraform - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Azure Storage backend

📖 Scenario: You are setting up Terraform to store its state files securely in Azure Storage. This helps teams collaborate safely and keeps your infrastructure state consistent.

🎯 Goal: Create a Terraform configuration that uses an Azure Storage Account as the backend to store the Terraform state file.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a resource group named exactly tfstate-rg

Create a storage account named exactly tfstateaccount

Create a storage container named exactly tfstatecontainer

Configure the Terraform backend to use the Azure Storage Account with the correct resource group, storage account, and container names

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Storing Terraform state files in Azure Storage is a common practice in real projects to enable collaboration and state locking.

💼 Career

Understanding how to configure remote backends in Terraform is essential for cloud engineers and DevOps professionals working with Azure.

1

Create the Azure resource group

Write Terraform code to create a resource group named tfstate-rg in the eastus location. Use the resource type azurerm_resource_group and name the resource tfstate_rg.

Terraform

# Your code here to create resource group tfstate-rg

Need a hint?

Use resource "azurerm_resource_group" "tfstate_rg" with name = "tfstate-rg" and location = "eastus".

2

Create the Azure storage account

Add Terraform code to create a storage account named tfstateaccount in the resource group tfstate-rg. Use the resource type azurerm_storage_account and name the resource tfstate_sa. Set account_tier to Standard and account_replication_type to LRS.

Terraform

resource "azurerm_resource_group" "tfstate_rg" {
  name     = "tfstate-rg"
  location = "eastus"
}

# Your code here to create storage account tfstateaccount

Need a hint?

Use resource "azurerm_storage_account" "tfstate_sa" with the exact name and link to the resource group.

3

Create the storage container

Add Terraform code to create a storage container named tfstatecontainer inside the storage account tfstateaccount. Use the resource type azurerm_storage_container and name the resource tfstate_container. Set the container_access_type to private.

Terraform

resource "azurerm_resource_group" "tfstate_rg" {
  name     = "tfstate-rg"
  location = "eastus"
}

resource "azurerm_storage_account" "tfstate_sa" {
  name                     = "tfstateaccount"
  resource_group_name      = azurerm_resource_group.tfstate_rg.name
  location                 = azurerm_resource_group.tfstate_rg.location
  account_tier             = "Standard"
  account_replication_type = "LRS"
}

# Your code here to create storage container tfstatecontainer

Need a hint?

Use resource "azurerm_storage_container" "tfstate_container" with the exact container name and link to the storage account.

4

Configure the Terraform backend

Add the terraform block to configure the backend to use Azure Storage. Set storage_account_name to tfstateaccount, container_name to tfstatecontainer, and resource_group_name to tfstate-rg. Use key as terraform.tfstate.

Terraform

resource "azurerm_resource_group" "tfstate_rg" {
  name     = "tfstate-rg"
  location = "eastus"
}

resource "azurerm_storage_account" "tfstate_sa" {
  name                     = "tfstateaccount"
  resource_group_name      = azurerm_resource_group.tfstate_rg.name
  location                 = azurerm_resource_group.tfstate_rg.location
  account_tier             = "Standard"
  account_replication_type = "LRS"
}

resource "azurerm_storage_container" "tfstate_container" {
  name                  = "tfstatecontainer"
  storage_account_name  = azurerm_storage_account.tfstate_sa.name
  container_access_type = "private"
}

# Your code here to configure terraform backend

Need a hint?

Use the terraform block with backend "azurerm" and set the exact names for resource group, storage account, container, and key.