Which statement about the -out option used with terraform plan is true?

• A. Tells Terraform to apply changes immediately
• B. Enables parallelism for resource creation
• C. Specifies the state file to use
• D. Saves the execution plan to a file for later use

Answer: (D)

Saving the execution plan to a file is what the -out option enables. When you run a plan with -out, Terraform writes the exact set of proposed actions to a file. That plan can then be applied later by running terraform apply with the path to that plan file, ensuring you execute exactly what you approved. This is especially useful in automation or review workflows where you want to separate planning from applying and prevent drift between what was planned and what gets applied.

The option is not about applying changes immediately, nor about increasing parallelism, nor about selecting which state file to use. Those are controlled by other flags and commands.