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Provider Configuration v1.10.x (latest)

Providers allow Terraform to interact with cloud providers, SaaS providers, and other APIs.

Some providers require you to configure them with endpoint URLs, cloud regions, or other
settings before Terraform can use them. This page documents how to configure settings for
providers.

Additionally, all Terraform configurations must declare which providers they require so that
Terraform can install and use them. The Provider Requirements page documents how to declare
providers so Terraform can install them.

Provider Configuration
Provider configurations belong in the root module of a Terraform configuration. (Child modules
receive their provider configurations from the root module; for more information, see The
Module providers Meta-Argument and Module Development: Providers Within Modules.)

A provider configuration is created using a provider block:

provider "google" {
project = "acme-app"
region = "us-central1"
}

The name given in the block header ( "google" in this example) is the local name of the
provider to configure. This provider should already be included in a required_providers block.

The body of the block (between { and } ) contains configuration arguments for the provider.
Most arguments in this section are defined by the provider itself; in this example both project
and region are specific to the google provider.

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You can use expressions in the values of these configuration arguments, but can only reference
values that are known before the configuration is applied. This means you can safely reference
input variables, but not attributes exported by resources (with an exception for resource
arguments that are specified directly in the configuration).

A provider's documentation should list which configuration arguments it expects. For providers
distributed on the Terraform Registry, versioned documentation is available on each provider's
page, via the "Documentation" link in the provider's header.

Some providers can use shell environment variables (or other alternate sources, like VM instance
profiles) as values for some of their arguments; when available, we recommend using this as a
way to keep credentials out of your version-controlled Terraform code.

There are also two "meta-arguments" that are defined by Terraform itself and available for all
provider blocks:

alias , for using the same provider with different configurations for different resources

version , which we no longer recommend (use provider requirements instead)

Unlike many other objects in the Terraform language, a provider block may be omitted if its
contents would otherwise be empty. Terraform assumes an empty default configuration for any
provider that is not explicitly configured.

alias : Multiple Provider Configurations

You can optionally define multiple configurations for the same provider, and select which one to
use on a per-resource or per-module basis. The primary reason for this is to support multiple
regions for a cloud platform; other examples include targeting multiple Docker hosts, multiple
Consul hosts, etc.

To create multiple configurations for a given provider, include multiple provider blocks with
the same provider name. For each additional non-default configuration, use the alias meta-
argument to provide an extra name segment. For example:

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# The default provider configuration; resources that begin with `aws_` will use
# it as the default, and it can be referenced as `aws`.
provider "aws" {
region = "us-east-1"
}

# Additional provider configuration for west coast region; resources can

# reference this as `aws.west`.
provider "aws" {
alias = "west"
region = "us-west-2"
}

To declare a configuration alias within a module in order to receive an alternate provider

configuration from the parent module, add the configuration_aliases argument to that
provider's required_providers entry. The following example declares both the mycloud and
mycloud.alternate provider configuration names within the containing module:

terraform {
required_providers {
mycloud = {
source = "mycorp/mycloud"
version = "~> 1.0"
configuration_aliases = [ mycloud.alternate ]
}
}
}

Default Provider Configurations

A provider block without an alias argument is the default configuration for that provider.
Resources that don't set the provider meta-argument will use the default provider
configuration that matches the first word of the resource type name. (For example, an
aws_instance resource uses the default aws provider configuration unless otherwise stated.)

If every explicit configuration of a provider has an alias, Terraform uses the implied empty
configuration as that provider's default configuration. (If the provider has any required
configuration arguments, Terraform will raise an error when resources default to the empty
configuration.)

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Referring to Alternate Provider Configurations

When Terraform needs the name of a provider configuration, it expects a reference of the form
<PROVIDER NAME>.<ALIAS> . In the example above, aws.west would refer to the provider with
the us-west-2 region.

These references are special expressions. Like references to other named entities (for example,
var.image_id ), they aren't strings and don't need to be quoted. But they are only valid in
specific meta-arguments of resource , data , and module blocks, and can't be used in arbitrary
expressions.

Selecting Alternate Provider Configurations

By default, resources use a default provider configuration (one without an alias argument)
inferred from the first word of the resource type name.

To use an alternate provider configuration for a resource or data source, set its provider meta-
argument to a <PROVIDER NAME>.<ALIAS> reference:

resource "aws_instance" "foo" {

provider = aws.west

# ...
}

To select alternate provider configurations for a child module, use its providers meta-
argument to specify which provider configurations should be mapped to which local provider
names inside the module:

module "aws_vpc" {
source = "./aws_vpc"
providers = {
aws = aws.west
}
}

Modules have some special requirements when passing in providers; see The Module
providers Meta-Argument for more details. In most cases, only root modules should define

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provider configurations, with all child modules obtaining their provider configurations from their
parents.

version (Deprecated)
The version meta-argument specifies a version constraint for a provider, and works the same
way as the version argument in a required_providers block. The version constraint in a
provider configuration is only used if required_providers does not include one for that
provider.

~Warning: The version argument in provider configurations is deprecated, and we will remove
it in a future Terraform version.

In Terraform 0.13 and later, always declare provider version constraints in the
required_providers block.

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