Moving Terraform resource from one remote state to another (with different versions)

Fri, 05 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The task Link to heading

I need to move Terraform resources from a v11 to a newer (up-to-date, v12) backend.

Limitations Link to heading

some resources couldn’t be recreated (destroyed);
some resources couldn’t be imported.

The basic concepts Link to heading

When we move resources to a new backend we usually use this formula:

$ cd <NEW_BACKEND_FOLDER>
$ terraform state pull > moving_terraform.tfstate
$ cd <ACTUAL_BACKEND_FOLDER>
$ terraform state mv -state-out=<NEW_BACKEND_FOLDER>/moving_terraform.tfstate module.some_name module.some_name
$ cd <NEW_BACKEND_FOLDER>
$ terraform state push moving_terraform.tfstate

Issues Link to heading

state mv from v11 backend to v12 isn’t supported:

Failed to load state: Terraform 0.11.8 does not support state version 4, please update.

all docs I found only refer state mv between backends using the same version.

The solution Link to heading

$ cd <ACTUAL_BACKEND_FOLDER>
$ terraform state pull > moving_terraform_v11.tfstate
$ cd <NEW_BACKEND_FOLDER>
$ terraform state pull > moving_terraform_v12.tfstate
$ terraform state mv -state <ACTUAL_BACKEND_FOLDER>/moving_terraform_v11.tfstate -state-out=<NEW_BACKEND_FOLDER>/moving_terraform_v12.tfstate module.some_name module.some_name
$ terraform state push moving_terraform_v12.tfstate
$ cd <ACTUAL_BACKEND_FOLDER>
$ terraform state rm module.some_name