Why State Matters
What is Terraform state, why does it exist, and what happens when a team treats it carelessly?
Practical scenario
A team keeps terraform.tfstate in the application repository. Two pull requests applied on the same afternoon produced a duplicated load balancer, and the state file in main no longer matches either engineer's local copy.
What it tests
Answer it out loud first. The guide below stays closed until you ask for it, on purpose.
- Whether the candidate understands state as the mapping between config and real resources
- Whether they know the operational requirements: remote backend, locking, encryption
- Whether they can describe concrete damage from state loss or state corruption
Reading a strong answer is not the same as producing one. Commit to what you would say, then compare.