Terraform CLI commands

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Reference
3-min read
Published Jul 22, 2025

Terraform CLI offers a wide variety of commands to manage your resources. In this section, we provide a high-level outline of the main commands. As these commands are not Terraform-related and not specifically for the Dynatrace Terraform provider, you can find details in the Terraform documentation.

Main Terraform commands

You can use the following native commands with the Dynatrace Terraform provider:

init: Prepares your working directory for other commands.
validate: Checks whether the configuration is valid.
plan: Show changes required by the current configuration.
apply: Creates or updates the infrastructure.
destroy: Destroys the previously created infrastructure.

Additionally, Dynatrace implements the following command specifically for the Dynatrace Terraform provider:

export: Exports the existing Dynatrace resources from a given Dynatrace environment. Terraform CLI examples provides examples of how to use the export command.

Export configuration from a Dynatrace environment using the Dynatrace Terraform Provider

In addition to Terraform's out-of-the-box functionality, the Dynatrace Terraform Provider can be executed as a standalone executable to export an existing configuration from a Dynatrace environment. This functionality provides an alternative to manually creating a Terraform configuration and an easy way to create templates based on an existing configuration.

When exporting resources, consider appropriate permission scopes for fetching the desired configuration items.

Prerequisites

Install Terraform and make it available in your PATH.
Create a platform token or OAuth client with the correct access permissions. The correct permissions depends on which APIs you use. For more info, see the API documentation or IAM policy reference.

Using the export utility

Define the environment variables to identify the Dynatrace tenant for configuration retrieval, according to the API support and access permission handling.

Optionally, set the environment variable DYNATRACE_TARGET_FOLDER to designate an output directory (export folder). If not set, the default directory .configuration is used.
Go to the Terraform Dynatrace Provider executable in the terminal. This executable isn't generic, such as terraform.exe or ./terraform.

Typically, you can find it in the .terraform/providers/registry.terraform.io/dynatrace-oss/dynatrace/{provider_version}/{os_version}/terraform-provider-dynatrace_x.y.z/ directory.

Directly invoke the executable with the options you need. The export is an additional functionality; invoking the plugin directly is OK, and you can ignore the warning.

terraform-provider-dynatrace.exe -export [-ref] [-migrate] [-import-state] [-id] [-flat] [-exclude] [<resourcename>[=<id>]]'

Options and flags

-ref: Enable resources with data sources and dependencies.
-migrate: Enable resources with dependencies, excluding data sources.

-import-state: Initialize Terraform modules and import resources into the state.
-id: Display commented id output in resource files.
-flat: Store all resources directly within the target folder without a module structure.
-exclude: Exclude specified resources from export.
-list-exclusions: Prints an overview of resources that won't get exported unless explicitly specified.

By default, Dashboards Dashboards (dynatrace_json_dashboard) and other resources are excluded from the export unless the resource is directly specified. Use the -list-exclusions option for a complete list of the excluded resources.

Example usage

The table below describes various use cases for the Dynatrace-specific export command, as well example commands to achieve the desired outcome. For simplicity, only Linux examples are provided.

Use case

Example

Export all configurations without data sources/dependencies.

./terraform-provider-dynatrace -export

Export all configurations with data sources/dependencies and include commented IDs.

./terraform-provider-dynatrace -export -ref -id

Export all configurations with data sources/dependencies including specified resources in the exclusion list.

./terraform-provider-dynatrace -export -ref * dynatrace_document dynatrace_platform_slo

Export specific configuration.

./terraform-provider-dynatrace -export dynatrace_document dynatrace_platform_slo

Export specific configurations and their dependencies.

./terraform-provider-dynatrace -export -ref dynatrace_platform_slo dynatrace_automation_workflow

Export specific alerting profiles by their IDs.

./terraform-provider-dynatrace -export -ref dynatrace_automation_workflow=4f5942d4-3450-40a8-818f-c5faeb3563d0 dynatrace_automation_workflow=9c4b75f1-9a64-4b44-a8e4-149154fd5325

Export multiple resources including dependencies.

./terraform-provider-dynatrace -export -ref dynatrace_document dynatrace_automation_workflow=4f5942d4-3450-40a8-818f-c5faeb3563d0

Export all configurations and import them into the state.

./terraform-provider-dynatrace -export -import-state

Export all service-level objectives and import them into the state.

./terraform-provider-dynatrace -export -import-state dynatrace_platform_slo

Export all configurations except specified resources.

./terraform-provider-dynatrace -export -ref -exclude dynatrace_platform_slo dynatrace_automation_workflow

Additional information

During a Terraform export, it's possible that certain files cannot be processed correctly. These files are moved to the following directories in the export folder, see Using the export utility. The reasons are added as comments at the beginning of each file.

.flawed: The files in this directory are either deprecated or require modifications.
.required_attention: The files in this directory lack essential information for a Terraform to be applied. This may be due to sensitive data or instances where the files require additional attention. (For example, dynatrace_credentials confidential strings are not available via the API.)