# Resource Persistence

Coder templates have full control over workspace ephemerality. In a
completely ephemeral workspace, there are zero resources in the Off state. In
a completely persistent workspace, there is no difference between the Off and
On states.

Most workspaces fall somewhere in the middle, persisting user data
such as filesystem volumes, but deleting expensive, reproducible resources
such as compute instances.

By default, all Coder resources are persistent, but
production templates **must** employ the practices laid out in this document
to prevent accidental deletion.

## Disabling Persistence

The [`coder_workspace` data source](https://registry.terraform.io/providers/coder/coder/latest/docs/data-sources/workspace) exposes the `start_count = [0 | 1]` attribute that other
resources reference to become ephemeral.

For example:

```hcl
data "coder_workspace" "me" {
}

resource "docker_container" "workspace" {
  # When `start_count` is 0, `count` is 0, so no `docker_container` is created.
  count = data.coder_workspace.me.start_count # 0 (stopped), 1 (started)
  # ... other config
}
```

## ⚠️ Persistence Pitfalls

Take this example resource:

```hcl
data "coder_workspace" "me" {
}

resource "docker_volume" "home_volume" {
  name = "coder-${data.coder_workspace.me.owner}-home"
}
```

Because we depend on `coder_workspace.me.owner`, if the owner changes their
username, Terraform would recreate the volume (wiping its data!) the next
time the workspace restarts.

Therefore, persistent resource names must only depend on immutable IDs such as:

- `coder_workspace.me.owner_id`
- `coder_workspace.me.id`

```hcl
data "coder_workspace" "me" {
}

resource "docker_volume" "home_volume" {
  # This volume will survive until the Workspace is deleted or the template
  # admin changes this resource block.
  name = "coder-${data.coder_workspace.id}-home"
}
```

## 🛡 Bulletproofing

Even if our persistent resource depends exclusively on static IDs, a change to
the `name` format or other attributes would cause Terraform to rebuild the resource.

Prevent Terraform from recreating the resource under any circumstance by setting the [`ignore_changes = all` directive in the `lifecycle` block](https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/language/meta-arguments/lifecycle#ignore_changes).

```hcl
data "coder_workspace" "me" {
}

resource "docker_volume" "home_volume" {
  # This resource will survive until either the entire block is deleted
  # or the workspace is.
  name = "coder-${data.coder_workspace.me.id}-home"
  lifecycle {
    ignore_changes = all
  }
}
```

## Up next

- [Templates](../templates/index.md)