I keep a personal wiki of infrastructure patterns I’ve used. This is one of those notes, cleaned up for public consumption. Every time I start a fresh Terraform project, I reference this. You’re welcome to steal it.
Table of Contents
- TL;DR - The Pattern That Works
- The Problem Nobody Talks About
- Why This Actually Matters
- The Four Approaches People Try
- The Bootstrap Module Pattern
- Migrating Existing Infrastructure
- S3-Compatible Backends
- Production Failure Patterns
- Bootstrap Principles
- The Complete Checklist
- Common Questions
TL;DR - The Pattern That Works
If you care about audits, recovery time, and team growth, the correct way to bootstrap Terraform state is: