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25 minutes

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404 — Refactoring State

Advanced

Advanced state manipulation: importing existing resources, renaming without recreation, and moving resources between states.

Learning Objectives

Import existing resources with terraform import

Rename resources using the moved block

Move resources with terraform state mv

Safely refactor Terraform configurations

Step 1

Create existing resources to import

Create files manually that simulate pre-existing infrastructure.

Commands to Run

mkdir -p ~/terraform-practice/lesson-404

cd ~/terraform-practice/lesson-404

cat > existing-app.conf << 'EOF'
name = legacy-application
version = 1.0.0
port = 3000
EOF

cat > existing-db.conf << 'EOF'
host = legacy-db.internal
port = 5432
max_connections = 50
EOF

ls -la *.conf

What This Does

These files represent infrastructure that exists but wasn't created by Terraform. This is common when adopting Terraform for existing systems.

Expected Outcome

Two 'legacy' configuration files created manually.

Pro Tips

1
Import is how you bring existing infrastructure under Terraform management

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