A Terraform provisioner must be nested inside a resource configuration block. Which of the following best reflects this statement?

• A. True
• B. False
• C. Only when using a null_resource
• D. It can be defined outside of a resource

Answer: (A)

Provisioners are tied to the lifecycle of a resource. They must be declared inside the resource block so Terraform runs them as part of that resource’s creation, update, or destruction. You specify what to run with a provisioner (for example, remote-exec to run commands on the created instance or local-exec to run commands on the machine running Terraform). If you want to perform provisioning steps without managing a real resource, you can use a placeholder resource like a null_resource, but you still define provisioners inside that resource block. They cannot be defined outside of a resource. Because of this, the statement is true.