Day 09 of my Terraform journey was all about resource lifecycle management.
Until today, I thought lifecycle rules were just optional settings people rarely use. But after practicing them hands-on, I realized how important they are when dealing with real infrastructure changes.
Terraform lifecycles let you control what Terraform should or should not do when something changes. This is extremely useful in production environments where accidental updates or deletions can cause problems.
Why Lifecycle Rules Matter
In many cases, we don’t want Terraform to automatically:
Why Lifecycle Rules Matter
In many cases, we don’t want Terraform to automatically:
- delete a resource
- replace a resource
- modify something that is sensitive
- recreate something every time a change happens Lifecycle rules help us put guardrails around our infrastructure.
1.create_before_destroy: Avoid Downtime
This setting tells Terraform to create the new resource first, and only then destroy the old one.
2.prevent_destroy: Safety Lock
This was the most interesting one for me:
It literally blocks Terraform from destroying the resource, even if it is removed from the code.
3.ignore_changes: Ignore Specific Updates
Sometimes a resource updates outside Terraform (like in AWS console).
Instead of Terraform trying to “fix it” on every apply, we can tell it to ignore certain changes.
What I Understood Practically
When I tried modifying values in my configuration:
- Terraform wanted to recreate the resource
- Lifecycle rules helped control what should and shouldn’t be changed
- Adding prevent_destroy stopped accidental deletion
- Using ignore_changes prevented unnecessary updates
- create_before_destroy ensured continuous availability
Hands-on practice made the purpose of lifecycle rules very clear.
Key Takeaways from Day 09
- Lifecycle rules give us control over Terraform behavior
- They prevent accidental deletions
- They avoid unnecessary recreations
- They keep critical resources safe
- They are heavily used in production Terraform code
- Lifecycle rules improve stability and predictability
Top comments (0)