Recover state from backup overview

This topic provides overview information about recovering Terraform state from a backup after a disaster, such as an accident when performing other state manipulation actions.

Workflow

1. Unlock Terraform: You may need to unlock Terraform when a terraform apply or other process unexpectedly terminates before Terraform can release its lock on the state backend. Unlocking Terraform overrides protectionsthat prevent two processes from modifying state at the same time. We do not recommend unlocking until you determine what caused the lock to get stuck.

   Refer to the terraform force-unlock command documentation for additional information.

2. Read state data: Run the terraform state pull command to read the state files from the configured backend.

3. Write state data: Run the terraform state push command to write state files to the configured backend.