Random Provider

The "random" provider allows the use of randomness within Terraform configurations. This is a logical provider, which means that it works entirely within Terraform's logic, and doesn't interact with any other services.

Unconstrained randomness within a Terraform configuration would not be very useful, since Terraform's goal is to converge on a fixed configuration by applying a diff. Because of this, the "random" provider provides an idea of managed randomness: it provides resources that generate random values during their creation and then hold those values steady until the inputs are changed.

Even with these resources, it is advisable to keep the use of randomness within Terraform configuration to a minimum, and retain it for special cases only; Terraform works best when the configuration is well-defined, since its behavior can then be more readily predicted.

Unless otherwise stated within the documentation of a specific resource, this provider's results are not sufficiently random for cryptographic use.

For more information on the specific resources available, see the links in the navigation bar. Read on for information on the general patterns that apply to this provider's resources.

Resource "Keepers"

As noted above, the random resources generate randomness only when they are created; the results produced are stored in the Terraform state and re-used until the inputs change, prompting the resource to be recreated.

The resources all provide a map argument called keepers that can be populated with arbitrary key/value pairs that should be selected such that they remain the same until new random values are desired.

For example:

resource "random_id" "server" {
  keepers = {
    # Generate a new id each time we switch to a new AMI id
    ami_id = "${var.ami_id}"
  }

  byte_length = 8
}

resource "aws_instance" "server" {
  tags = {
    Name = "web-server ${random_id.server.hex}"
  }

  # Read the AMI id "through" the random_id resource to ensure that
  # both will change together.
  ami = "${random_id.server.keepers.ami_id}"

  # ... (other aws_instance arguments) ...
}

Resource "keepers" are optional. The other arguments to each resource must also remain constant in order to retain a random result.

To force a random result to be replaced, the taint command can be used to produce a new result on the next run.