Which statement about state backends is true?

• A. State backends are local only
• B. State backends provide remote storage and locking
• C. State backends are deprecated
• D. State backends are automatically encrypted

Answer: (B)

State backends define where Terraform stores the state and how that state is accessed and protected. The key idea is that a backend can either keep the state locally on your machine or remotely in a shared store, and remote backends also provide a locking mechanism to prevent concurrent updates from multiple users or automation runs.

So why is the statement that state backends provide remote storage and locking the best fit? Remote storage allows a team to share a single source of truth for the infrastructure state, which is essential for collaboration. The locking feature ensures only one Terraform operation can modify the state at a time, preventing race conditions and potential state corruption when multiple planners/appliers run simultaneously.

The other options are less accurate: state backends aren’t exclusively local—remote backends are common and purposeful. They aren’t deprecated. And while some backends can enable encryption at rest (and many do, depending on the provider), encryption isn’t an automatic or universal property defined by the concept of a backend itself.