topic Re: Terraform provider backend state in Automations

Terraform provider backend state

tarjei — Wed, 13 May 2026 10:28:45 GMT

Hi!

I would like to import state of a set of configurations directly to my backend (s3 bucket / azurerm) but I cannot see any way of tweaking this.

Any suggestions?

Re: Terraform provider backend state

sujit_k_singh — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 04:43:51 GMT

Hi @tarjei

Terraform doesn’t support directly importing state into a backend (S3/AzureRM) outside of its normal workflow.

You have two options:

Configure the backend first → run terraform init → then terraform import (this writes directly to remote state)
Or import locally and migrate using terraform init -migrate-state

Backend is just storage — all state operations must go through Terraform CLI.

Refer this link for more details

How to Import Resources into a Remote State Managed by Terraform Cloud – HashiCorp Help Center

Thanks,

Sujit

Re: Terraform provider backend state

t_pawlak — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 13:38:42 GMT

Hi,

I agree with @sujit_k_singh here.

The remote backend, such as S3 or AzureRM, is only the storage layer for the Terraform state. Terraform does not support safely “pushing” or importing resources directly into the backend state file outside of the normal Terraform workflow.

The usual approach would be:

Configure the backend first.
Run terraform init
Run terraform import or use import blocks.
Let Terraform write the imported resources into the configured remote state.

Alternatively, if the import was already done locally, you can configure the remote backend afterwards and migrate the state with:

terraform init -migrate-state

So in short: don’t edit/upload the state manually to S3/AzureRM. Let Terraform CLI manage the state operations.