Can aws cdk provide remote state?

Question

Terraform has a remote stack via well documented plugins, i.e. terraform.backend.s3 https://www.terraform.io/docs/language/settings/backends/s3.html

Can aws cdk provide remote state for the stacks? I can't find in documentation. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/latest/guide/awscdk.pdfstack

I ask about aws cdk because I found pure documentation about aws cdktf. Found that cloud cloudfront generates a lot of json file as well as uses it. Does the contain state?

Answer 1

The CDK uses CloudFormation under the hood, which manages the remote state of the infrastructure in a similar way like a Terraform state-file. You get the benefit of AWS taking care of state management for you (for free) without the risks of doing it yourself and messing up your state file.

The drawback is that if there is drift between the state CloudFormation thinks resources are in and their actual state, things get tricky.