You have to initialize a Terraform backend before it can be configured.

• A. True
• B. False
• C. It depends on the backend
• D. Not required for local backends

Answer: (B)

Backend configuration is declared in the Terraform code and becomes active only after you initialize. You write a backend block in your configuration (for example, configuring a remote backend like S3 or a local backend), and then you run terraform init to connect to that backend, create or migrate state as needed, and prepare Terraform to work with it. You don’t need to initialize before you can write the backend configuration; initialization is the step that wires Terraform to the backend you’ve defined. This applies to local backends as well—init is still used to set up and use the backend, even though there’s no remote service involved. So the statement is false.