Remote Plan

Remote Backend allows running your Terraform plan locally by triggering a remote plan in env0.
The remote plan uses your local Terraform files but actually runs it remotely in env0 while using the shared state and variables set for the env0 environment. Each remote plan creates a deployment in env0 so you will have an audit for each deployment.
By running a remote plan you can build your IaC faster, and test your changes locally before committing them.

Additional benefits are the rest of the env0 features that are automatically integrated into your plan logs. It includes:

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Remote Apply
Please note that remote apply execution is currently blocked.
Your env0 environment is VCS connected and the goal is to keep it as the single source of truth. Blocking remote applies protects your environment from unknown change requests.

Auditing

env0 UI can show you each remote plan deployment that has occurred, accesses its plan logs, and gives you visibility and audit on who actually trigged it from their local environment.

Local Executions

If you still wish to run a plan or apply locally, without a remote execution by env0 - you can do it by enabling terraform's TF_FORCE_LOCAL_BACKEND environment variable.

TF_FORCE_LOCAL_BACKEND=1 terraform apply

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Local Execution
When running plan or apply locally, those deployments are not audited in env0 and RBAC and policy control are not enforced. In addition since the code you are running is not commited, we can't attach that deployment to a certain commit or a branch.
You should avoid using Local Execution as much as possible.