Managing Terraform at scale

Before we conclude this chapter, let us look at another aspect of state files. So far, our Terraform files have been manageable as we deployed only a few resources simultaneously. However, even a medium-complexity architecture requires dozens or hundreds of interdependent resources. Using modules, we can reduce this complexity of the Terraform code, but we will still provision many cloud resources with many dependencies. Furthermore, as our use of Terraform grows, we will have teams of several members developing Terraform code simultaneously. Then, managing all resources in a single state file becomes challenging. For example, the team member responsible for the networking might want to change just when another team member is running Terraform to add a virtual machine and hence is prevented from running Terraform simultaneously. Or, the database team wants to use a new feature in the latest provider version that the networking team hasn’t been able...