DevOps Interview DropIntermediate TierScenario+25 XP on read

Two engineers run terraform apply at the same time against the same environment. What happens, and how do you prevent it?

#Terraform#IaC#State

Core Summary

Without locking, concurrent applies race on the state file and the last writer wins — silently orphaning real infrastructure. Remote state with a lock (S3 with native locking or DynamoDB, or Terraform Cloud) makes the second apply wait instead of corrupting.

Hint 1: State is the map from config to real resource IDs

Hint 2: The failure mode is silent, not a loud error

Hint 3: Locking is a property of the backend, not of Terraform itself

Reported in interviews at HashiCorp, Atlassian

Two engineers run terraform apply at the same time against the same environment. What happens, and how do you prevent it?

Core Summary

Hints