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»Run Modes and Options

Terraform Cloud runs support many of the same modes and options available in the Terraform CLI.

»Destroy Mode

Destroy mode instructs Terraform to create a plan which destroys all objects, regardless of configuration changes.

  • CLI: Use terraform plan -destroy or terraform destroy
  • API: Use the is-destroy option.
  • UI: Use a workspace's "Destruction and Deletion" settings page.

»Refresh-Only Mode

Hands-on: Try the Use Refresh-Only Mode to Sync Terraform State tutorial on HashiCorp Learn.

Version note: Refresh-only support is available in Terraform Enterprise v202106-1 or later and requires a workspace using at least Terraform CLI v0.15.4.

Refresh-only mode instructs Terraform to create a plan which updates the Terraform state to match changes made to remote objects outside of Terraform.

  • CLI: Use terraform plan -refresh-only or terraform apply -refresh-only.
  • API: Use the refresh-only option.
  • UI: Use the "Start new plan" action from a workspace's "Actions" menu, then choose the "Refresh-only" plan type in the new plan dialog.

»Skipping Automatic State Refresh

Version note: The ability to skip automatic state refresh is available in Terraform Enterprise v202106-1 or later.

The -refresh=false option is used in normal planning mode to skip the default behavior of refreshing Terraform state before checking for configuration changes.

  • CLI: Use terraform plan -refresh=false or terraform apply -refresh=false.
  • API: Use the refresh option.

»Replacing Selected Resources

Version note: Replace support is available in Terraform Enterprise v202106-1 or later and requires a workspace using at least Terraform CLI v0.15.2.

The replace option instructs Terraform to replace the object with the given resource address.

  • CLI: Use terraform plan -replace=ADDRESS or terraform apply -replace=ADDRESS.
  • API: Use the replace-addrs option.

»Targeted Plan and Apply

Version note: Targeting support is available in Terraform Enterprise v202006-1 or later.

Resource Targeting is intended for exceptional circumstances only and should not be used routinely.

  • CLI: Use terraform plan -target=ADDRESS or terraform apply -target=ADDRESS.
  • API: Use the target-addrs option.

The usual caveats for targeting in local operations imply some additional limitations on Terraform Cloud features for remote plans created with targeting:

  • Sentinel policy checks for targeted plans will see only the selected subset of resource instances planned for changes in the tfplan import and the tfplan/v2 import, which may cause an unintended failure for any policy that requires a planned change to a particular resource instance selected by its address.

  • Cost Estimation is disabled for any run created with -target set, to prevent producing a misleading underestimate of cost due to resource instances being excluded from the plan.

You can disable or constrain use of targeting in a particular workspace using a Sentinel policy based on the tfrun.target_addrs value.