OpenTofu: The Only Sane Choice for Infrastructure as Code in 2024

I still remember the collective groan that echoed through every Slack channel in Oslo on August 10, 2023. That was the day HashiCorp announced the Business Source License (BSL) transition for Terraform. For many of us managing critical infrastructure across the Nordics, it wasn't just a license change; it was a breach of trust. Fast forward to November 2024, and the dust has settled. We have a clear winner for those who value true open source freedom: OpenTofu.

If you are running proprietary stacks, maybe you don't care. But if you are building resilient systems compliant with GDPR and Schrems II, you can't afford legal ambiguity in your toolchain. I have spent the last six months migrating high-availability clusters from Terraform v1.5.x to OpenTofu, and the results are not just comparable—they are better. Here is how to execute the switch without taking down your production environment.

The Fork in the Road: Why OpenTofu?

It is not just about the license. Since falling under the Linux Foundation umbrella, OpenTofu has introduced features that the community screamed for years about, but which were ignored in favor of paid enterprise tiers. The most significant? Client-side state encryption.

In the past, securing your terraform.tfstate required complex backend configurations or third-party wrappers. With OpenTofu, it is native. For a Norwegian VPS provider or a fintech startup in Bergen, keeping infrastructure state encrypted at rest is not optional—it is basic hygiene.

Pro Tip: If you are hosting your state files on an S3-compatible backend (like MinIO on a CoolVDS storage instance), OpenTofu's state encryption adds a critical second layer of defense against data leaks.

Step 1: Installation and Version Management

First, get the binary. If you are on a Mac or Linux machine, the process is straightforward. Do not use the old HashiCorp tap.

# For Debian/Ubuntu based systems
snap install opentofu --classic

# Or verify GPG keys manually (The paranoid DevOps way)
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -fsSL https://get.opentofu.org/install-opentofu.sh | sh -s -- --install-method deb

Once installed, verify the version. As of today, November 6, 2024, you should be looking at the stable 1.8.x series.

Step 2: The Migration (It's Easier Than You Think)

The beauty of OpenTofu is that it functions as a drop-in replacement for Terraform versions prior to 1.6. If you haven't updated your TF modules to the BSL versions yet, you are golden. The commands are identical, just s/terraform/tofu/.

Here is a typical main.tf setup for deploying a high-performance web node. Notice that we are essentially unchanged, but we prepare for the registry switch.

terraform {
  required_providers {
    # OpenTofu uses the OpenTofu registry by default, but falls back 
    # gracefully to the public registry for compatibility.
    coolvds = {
      source = "local/providers/coolvds" # Or your specific registry path
      version = "~> 2.1"
    }
    aws = {
      source  = "hashicorp/aws"
      version = "~> 5.0"
    }
  }
  required_version = ">= 1.6.0"
}

provider "coolvds" {
  region = "no-oslo-1"
  token  = var.api_token
}

resource "coolvds_instance" "web_node" {
  name      = "production-nginx-01"
  plan      = "nvme-4c-8g" # 4 Core, 8GB RAM, NVMe
  image     = "ubuntu-22.04"
  location  = "Oslo"
  
  # Critical for Nordic latency optimization
  network_speed = 1000
}

Handling the State File

This is the scary part for most SysAdmins. Will tofu init corrupt my state? In 99% of cases, no. OpenTofu reads the existing terraform.tfstate. However, once you run a tofu apply, the state file is updated. Terraform (the BSL version) might refuse to read it afterwards. It is a one-way door.

Back up your state before running this:

Now, initialize the migration:

Step 3: Implementing State Encryption

This is the feature that makes the switch technically superior, not just philosophically correct. Here is how you configure encryption in your cloud_settings.tf block. This ensures that even if someone dumps your S3 bucket, they can't read your database passwords or API keys stored in the state.

terraform {
  encryption {
    key_provider "pbkdf2" "my_passphrase" {
      passphrase = var.state_passphrase
    }

    method "aes_gcm" "my_method" {
      keys = key_provider.pbkdf2.my_passphrase
    }

    state {
      method = method.aes_gcm.my_method
      enforced = true
    }
  }
}

You define a key provider (PBKDF2 is robust enough for most, though you can tie into KMS) and enforce AES-GCM encryption. When you run tofu apply with this configuration, your local or remote state is encrypted on the fly.

Performance: Latency and Execution Time

We ran benchmarks comparing Terraform 1.5.7 against OpenTofu 1.7.0 on a CoolVDS Compute Instance (8 vCPU, NVMe storage). The execution time for a plan involving 500 resources was nearly identical, but OpenTofu showed slightly faster graph traversal times in complex dependency trees.

Why Infrastructure Matters

Your IaC tool is only as good as the API it talks to. We see developers struggling with "noisy neighbor" issues on hyperscalers, where variable CPU performance breaks local-exec provisioners or causes timeouts during large apply operations. This is where the underlying metal matters.

At CoolVDS, we don't oversell our cores. When you define a resource in OpenTofu targeting our Oslo datacenter, the allocation is rigid. We use KVM virtualization to ensure that your NVMe storage I/O is dedicated. This consistency is vital when automating database clusters where timing is everything.

Common Pitfall: The Registry URL

By default, OpenTofu points to registry.opentofu.org. Some obscure providers might not be mirrored there yet. You can force a specific registry mirror if needed, or simply rely on the fact that OpenTofu redirects to GitHub releases for most providers anyway.

To debug provider issues, use the enhanced logging:

Final Verdict

The split is permanent. As we move deeper into 2024, the divergence between Terraform and OpenTofu will grow. Terraform is focusing on their Cloud offering; OpenTofu is focusing on the CLI tool we all love. For teams in Europe, where data sovereignty and open standards are paramount (and mandated by legal frameworks), OpenTofu is the logical path forward.

It provides the stability of the past with the features of the future, without the threat of a vendor lawyer knocking on your door because you built a competing product.

Ready to harden your infrastructure? Don't run your code on sluggish hardware. Spin up a CoolVDS instance in 55 seconds and experience the low latency difference yourself.