How to fix context deadline exceeded in Terraform

First, ensure you're running the latest versions of Terraform and your cloud provider. Timeout handling improvements are frequently added in updates.

terraform version

Upgrade if needed:

terraform init -upgrade

Increase the timeout for resources known to take a long time. Add a timeouts block directly to your resource:

resource "aws_instance" "example" {
  ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0"
  instance_type = "t2.micro"

  timeouts {
    create = "15m"
    update = "20m"
    delete = "10m"
  }
}

For Azure resources, use:

resource "azurerm_app_service" "example" {
  name = "example-app"
  # ... other config ...

  timeouts {
    create = "1h"
    update = "1h"
    delete = "30m"
  }
}

Run Terraform with trace logging to get detailed information about where the timeout occurs:

export TF_LOG=trace
terraform apply 2>&1 | tee terraform-debug.log

Search the log for timing information, API calls being made, and the exact point where the deadline was exceeded. This helps identify if it's a specific API call or a cumulative issue.

Verify you have stable, low-latency connectivity to the cloud provider's API endpoints:

# For AWS
ping dynamodb.us-east-1.amazonaws.com

# For Azure
ping management.azure.com

# For Terraform registry
ping registry.terraform.io

If you're behind a corporate proxy or VPN, verify the proxy is not adding significant latency or dropping requests.

If deploying many resources at once, reduce parallelism and split into smaller deployments:

# Reduce default parallelism from 10 to 2
terraform apply -parallelism=2

Or create multiple Terraform modules/workspaces deployed separately. This reduces the number of concurrent API calls and gives each one more time to complete.

If you see HTTP 429 status codes with the context deadline error, the cloud provider is rate-limiting your requests:

# Look for 429 in the debug log
grep -i '429\|throttl' terraform-debug.log

Solutions include:
- Waiting before retrying
- Reducing the number of resources created simultaneously
- Contacting your cloud provider to increase rate limits
- Using Terraform's built-in retry logic by just running apply again

If the resource was actually created in the cloud but Terraform's state wasn't updated due to timeout:

# Find the resource ID in the cloud console
terraform import aws_instance.example i-1234567890abcdef0

This brings the already-created resource into Terraform's state management, allowing you to continue with future applies.