create-secondary-zone.mdx

pcx_content_type	title	sidebar	head
how-to	Create a secondary zone using Terraform	order label 2 Create a secondary zone	tag content title Create a secondary zone using Terraform

A secondary zone lets you manage a subdomain in a separate Cloudflare zone from the parent domain. This is useful for access control and team management. This guide shows how to automate the setup using the Cloudflare Terraform provider.

Prerequisites

• Terraform installed. Refer to Get started.
• Your Cloudflare account ID and a configured provider block. Refer to Initialize Terraform.

Create the zone

Create a cloudflare_zone resource with type = "secondary". The following example creates a secondary zone for subdomain.example.com:

resource "cloudflare_zone" "subdomain_example_com" {
  account = {
    id = var.cloudflare_account_id
  }
  name = "subdomain.example.com"
  type = "secondary"
}

Terraform creates the zone in a Pending state. You must add NS delegation records to the parent zone before Cloudflare activates it.

:::note Refer to the cloudflare_zone docs in the Terraform provider documentation when you need to reference other zone properties. :::

Related resources

• Subdomain setup
• cloudflare_zone resource
• cloudflare_dns_record resource