Enabling Terraform Explorer in Terraform Enterprise

Overview

Terraform Explorer is a feature available from Terraform Enterprise (TFE) version 1.0.x and later, designed to allow administrators and users to query Terraform state data across workspaces and resources. Explorer indexes Terraform state into a dedicated PostgreSQL database and provides an efficient query interface.

This article explains how to enable Terraform Explorer in a Docker Compose–based deployment, along with system requirements, setup steps, and validation procedures.

Requirements

Terraform Explorer is supported only in the following deployment modes:

• External Services (Mounted Disk is not supported)
• Active-Active Deployments

Not Supported:

• Mounted Disk Mode
• Pre-1.0.x versions of Terraform Enterprise

To enable Explorer, you must also provision a separate PostgreSQL database that Explorer will use to index Terraform state.

Prerequisites

Before enabling Terraform Explorer, ensure:

• You are running TFE v1.0.x or above 
• TFE is deployed in External Services mode or Active-Active 
• PostgreSQL database (AWS RDS or self-hosted) is available 
• Network access exists between TFE nodes and the PostgreSQL host 
• You can edit and restart the TFE deployment (compose.yaml or helm/override values for K8s)

Step 1 — Create the Explorer Database

Terraform Explorer requires its own dedicated database. You may:

Option A: Create a new PostgreSQL instance

This isolates Explorer indexing from TFE’s primary database.

Option B: Create a new database on the existing RDS PostgreSQL instance

Example:

CREATE DATABASE tfe_explorer;

Ensure the DB user has appropriate privileges:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE tfe_explorer TO postgres;

Step 2 — Add Explorer Configuration to compose.yaml

Edit the compose.yaml for your TFE Docker deployment and add the following environment variables under the terraform-enterprise service:

environment:

  # Enable Terraform Explorer
  TFE_EXPLORER_DATABASE_HOST: "example.ap-south-1.rds.amazonaws.com"
  TFE_EXPLORER_DATABASE_NAME: "tfe_explorer"
  TFE_EXPLORER_DATABASE_USER: "postgres"
  TFE_EXPLORER_DATABASE_PASSWORD: "<password>"
  TFE_EXPLORER_DATABASE_PARAMETERS: "sslmode=require"

Step 3 — Restart Terraform Enterprise

After updating the configuration:

docker compose down
docker compose up -d

During startup, Terraform Enterprise will automatically:

• Connect to the Explorer database 
• Initialize Explorer schema 
• Begin indexing workspace state data

Step 4 — Validate Terraform Explorer

Once TFE is back online:

• Log in to the TFE UI
• Locate Explorer in the left navigation panel
• Run a sample query

Example queries include filtering by:

• Workspace 
• Provider 
• Resource type 
• Module

If indexing is completed successfully, results will appear in the Explorer UI.

References:

https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/enterprise/1.0.x/deploy/configuration/enable-explorer