Remote Plan
Remote Backend allows running your Terraform plan locally by triggering a remote plan in env zero.The remote plan uses your local Terraform files but actually runs it remotely in env zero while using the shared state and variables set for the env zero environment. Each remote plan creates a deployment in env zero so you will have an audit for each deployment.
By running a remote plan you can build your IaC faster, and test your changes locally before committing them. Additional benefits are the rest of the env zero features that are automatically integrated into your plan logs. It includes:


.terraformignore
If cases where your gitrepo is particularly large, this will cause the remote plan to take a longer time to process (due to compressing and decompressing the gitrepo). You can save time on the remote plan by adding a.terraformignore
to the root of the repo.
.terraformignore
ignore the local
.terraform
folderIf you have a local .terraform
folder, please add it to the ignore list (like in the example above), otherwise you may get some errors such as workspace not supported
Auditing
env zero UI can show you each remote plan deployment that has occurred, accesses its plan logs, and gives you visibility and audit on who actually trigged it from their local environment.
Local Executions
If you still wish to run aplan
or apply
locally, without a remote execution by env zero - you can do it by enabling terraformโs TF_FORCE_LOCAL_BACKEND
environment variable.
Local ExecutionWhen running
plan
or apply
locally, those deployments are not audited in env zero and RBAC and policy control are not enforced. In addition since the code you are running is not commited, we canโt attach that deployment to a certain commit or a branch.You should avoid using Local Execution as much as possible.