I started working with Terraform and realized that the state files were created and saved locally. After some searching I found that it is not recommended that terraform state files be committed to git.
So I added a backend configuration using S3 as the backend. Then I ran the following command
terraform init -reconfigure
I realize now that this set the backend as S3 but didn't copy any files.
Now when I run terraform plan, it plans to recreate the entire infrastructure that already exists.
I don't want to destroy and recreate the existing infrastructure. I just want terraform to recognize the local state files and copy them to S3.
Any suggestions on what I might do now?
State files are basically JSON files containing information about the current setup. You can manually copy files from the local to remote(S3) backend and use them without issues. You can read more about state files here: https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/terraform/state-cli
I also manage a package to handle remote states in S3/Blob/GCS, if you want to try: https://github.com/tomarv2/tfremote