seniorDevOps

Managing Drift in Infrastructure as Code.

Updated Apr 28, 2026

Short answer

Configuration drift occurs when real-world cloud resources diverge from the IaC definitions, usually due to manual console changes.

Deep explanation

To manage drift, you must run frequent scheduled terraform plan checks (Drift Detection). GitOps inherently prevents drift by constantly reconciling state. If drift is detected, you can either overwrite the manual changes (terraform apply) or import the manual changes into the code.

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