In Terraform, what is a workspace?

A workspace in Terraform is a mechanism that allows users to manage multiple states within a single backend. This feature is particularly useful when dealing with various environments, such as development, staging, and production, all while utilizing the same configuration files. By creating separate workspaces, you can isolate the state for each environment, making it easier to manage and track changes without interference from other environments.

This approach streamlines the process of managing multiple instances of infrastructure that may require different settings or resource configurations but still share common code. With workspaces, there is no need to create separate Terraform configurations or directories, thus enhancing code reuse and maintaining simplicity in the management of infrastructure as code.

Utilizing workspaces effectively allows teams to quickly switch contexts between environments and ensures that the correct state is always applied when running Terraform commands, minimizing the risk of errors associated with deploying to the wrong environment.