How to Import an Azure Recovery Services Vault into Terraform

Import Azure Recovery Services Vault with Terraback (recommended)

Terraback reverse-engineers your live infrastructure: it reads the Azure Backup resource with read-only credentials, generates the HCL, and produces the exact import block. Two commands take you from a live Azure Recovery Services Vault to managed Terraform.

terraback scan all azure --subscription-id YOUR_ID

terraback azure import --method bulk

The Terraform import block

Terraback emits a Terraform 1.5+ import block like the one below. Because the block lives in your configuration, the import is reviewable in a pull request and repeatable across environments.

import {
  to = azurerm_recovery_services_vault.main
  id = "/subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/prod-rg/providers/Microsoft.RecoveryServices/vaults/prod-rsv"
}

Example azurerm_recovery_services_vault configuration

Here is a realistic Azure Recovery Services Vault block. Terraback generates a fuller version from your actual resource attributes; this is a minimal, valid starting point.

resource "azurerm_recovery_services_vault" "main" {
  name                = "prod-rsv"
  resource_group_name = "prod-rg"
  location            = "eastus"
  sku                 = "Standard"
  soft_delete_enabled = true
}

Gotchas when importing a Azure Recovery Services Vault

• Backup policies and protected items (azurerm_backup_policy_vm, azurerm_backup_protected_vm, and so on) are separate resources, not imported with the vault.
• soft_delete_enabled cannot be disabled if there are protected items, and disabling it has a hardening review period.
• storage_mode_type and cross_region_restore_enabled may require there to be no registered items before they can change.
• A vault that protects items cannot be deleted until all backups are unregistered.

Doing it manually with terraform import

The native approach is to write the azurerm_recovery_services_vault block by hand, then run terraform import azurerm_recovery_services_vault.example <import-id> for every resource, one at a time. That works for a handful of resources, but it does not scale: you author all the HCL yourself and repeat the command for each item. Terraback generates the HCL and the import blocks for your whole account in one pass.

Import other Azure resources