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Introduction to Terraback

What is Terraback?​

Terraback is a multi-cloud CLI tool that reverse-engineers existing cloud infrastructure into clean, production-ready Terraform code. It scans your AWS, Azure, and GCP resources and generates properly formatted Terraform configurations with intelligent dependency discovery.

Transform legacy cloud environments into infrastructure-as-code in minutes, not months.

Key Features​

  • Fast Scanning: Scan entire cloud accounts in minutes with parallel processing
  • Intelligent Dependencies: Automatic discovery and mapping of resource relationships
  • Multi-Cloud Support: Full support for AWS, Azure, and GCP
  • Production-Ready Output: Clean, formatted Terraform code following best practices
  • Enterprise Modules: Organize generated code into reusable module structures
  • Import Ready: Generate import commands to bring resources under Terraform control

Why Terraback?​

The Problem​

Migrating existing cloud infrastructure to Terraform is painful:

  • Manual Documentation: Writing Terraform for existing resources is tedious and error-prone
  • Hidden Dependencies: Resources have complex relationships that are hard to discover manually
  • Time Consuming: Large environments can take weeks or months to document
  • Inconsistent Output: Manual efforts produce inconsistent, hard-to-maintain code

The Solution​

Terraback automates the reverse-engineering process:

  1. Scan: Point Terraback at your cloud account and scan resources
  2. Generate: Get clean Terraform code with proper formatting and dependencies
  3. Import: Use generated import commands to bring resources into Terraform state
  4. Manage: Your infrastructure is now under Terraform control

Core Concepts​

Resource Scanning​

Terraback connects to your cloud provider APIs (read-only) and discovers:

  • Resource configurations and settings
  • Tags and metadata
  • Relationships between resources
  • Current state of your infrastructure

Terraform Generation​

For each discovered resource, Terraback generates:

  • Properly formatted .tf files using Jinja2 templates
  • Import commands for state migration
  • Provider configuration
  • Variable definitions where appropriate

Dependency Discovery​

The --with-deps flag enables intelligent dependency mapping:

  • Discovers related resources automatically
  • Maps parent-child relationships
  • Handles cross-service dependencies (e.g., EC2 to VPC to Security Groups)
  • Generates resources in the correct order

Enterprise Modules​

The --enterprise-modules flag organizes output into a production-ready structure:

  • Logical grouping by service type
  • Auto-generated variables.tf and outputs.tf
  • README documentation per module
  • Environment-specific configurations

Supported Cloud Providers​

Terraback ships 240+ resource types across the three major clouds.

AWS (80+ resource types)​

Core infrastructure, compute, networking, storage, databases, serverless, containers, monitoring, and security services.

Azure (80+ resource types)​

Virtual machines, networking, storage, databases, containers, app services, and monitoring.

GCP (80+ resource types)​

Compute, networking, storage, databases, containers, serverless, and monitoring.

Licensing​

Terraback offers two tiers:

FeatureCommunity (Free)Professional ($499)
Core resources (VPC, EC2, S3, VMs, etc.)UnlimitedUnlimited
Advanced services (RDS, Lambda, ECS, etc.)-Full access
Dependency scanning (--with-deps)-Yes
Enterprise modules (--enterprise-modules)-Yes
Parallel scanning (--parallel N)-Yes
Variable extraction & environment detection-Yes
SupportCommunityPriority email

Getting Started​

Ready to convert your infrastructure to Terraform? Here's how to begin:

  1. Install Terraback: pip install terraback
  2. Configure Credentials: Set up AWS/Azure/GCP authentication
  3. Scan: Run terraback scan all aws -r us-east-1 -o ./output
  4. Import: Use generated import commands to bring resources into Terraform

Continue to the Installation Guide to get started.

Support & Community​

Resources​

  • Documentation: Comprehensive guides and references
  • Email Support: contact@terraback.io — report issues and request features

Professional License​

Get full access to all features with a Professional license:

  • All cloud services across AWS, Azure, and GCP
  • Dependency scanning and enterprise modules
  • Parallel scanning for faster results
  • Priority email support

Visit Licensing for more information.