Terraform Drift & State Recovery — Challenge

The goal#

Achieve the same outcome as Terraform Drift & State Recovery, from an empty starting point, without the steps.

Someone widened a security group in the console during an incident. Someone else ran terraform apply a week later and closed it again, causing a second incident.

Then the state file was deleted.

All three are recoverable. None of them require rebuilding the infrastructure — which is what people do when they do not know these commands.

What must be true when you are done#

• You detected a manual change and can explain both ways to resolve it.
• A resource created outside Terraform is imported and plan reports no changes.
• A deleted state file is restored from S3 versioning and matches reality.
• Nothing was destroyed and recreated during any of it.

Rules#

• Do not open the guided lab until you are finished, or until the same problem has held you up for 20 minutes.
• Documentation is allowed and encouraged.
• Verify every criterion with a command whose output you can read.

If you get stuck#

1. What did you expect, exactly?
2. What happened instead — the error text, not a paraphrase?
3. Which layer is that error from?
4. What is the smallest command that proves the layer below is fine?