Reference: Opinion/Experience Post

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Terraform state drift is treated as an edge case. In my experience it’s more like a regular occurrence that teams aren’t monitoring for.

The scenario is always some variation of: someone makes a manual change in the portal — usually under time pressure, usually with good intentions — and doesn’t update the Terraform code to match. The state file now reflects reality as Terraform last knew it, not reality as it actually is. Next terraform plan shows unexpected changes. The team gets confused, makes it worse, or both.

Terraform on takebakker.dev

Reference: Opinion/Experience Post