Question

A DevOps engineer manually changed the instance type of an EC2 server through the AWS console after it was originally created by Terraform. During the next 'terraform plan', the engineer notices that Terraform reports the instance type as different from what is in the configuration and proposes to change it back. Which mechanism allows Terraform to know the current real-world attribute of the instance before generating the plan?

Accepted Answer

Terraform refreshes the state by querying the provider API for the actual resource attributes, then compares them against the configuration.

Answer

Terraform re-reads the .tf configuration files and assumes the last-applied values are still accurate in the cloud.

Answer

Terraform relies solely on the values stored in the state file without contacting the provider, so manual changes are invisible.

Answer

Terraform uses provisioners to SSH into the instance and inspect its runtime configuration during the plan phase.