You have two separate Terraform configurations:Configuration A provisions a virtual network and subnets.

The correct answer is C because local state files are not reliable for shared automation environments such as CI/CD pipelines. A local backend stores state on the machine where Terraform runs, so another pipeline worker usually cannot access that file. Moving Configuration A to a remote backend, such as HCP Terraform, Amazon S3, Azure Storage, or Google Cloud Storage, makes the state centrally available to authorized Terraform runs. Configuration B can then use the terraform_remote_state data source to read Configuration A’s outputs from that remote backend. Option A creates manual value passing and can drift from actual state. Option B fails when the file is not on the pipeline machine. Option D may work technically, but it removes useful separation between network and compute configurations.