Migrating from Terraform to OpenTofu requires careful planning. After completing production migrations, here’s a practical guide.

Migration Steps

1. Assessment

# Audit Terraform usage
find . -name "*.tf" -o -name "*.tfvars" | wc -l

# Check providers
grep -r "required_providers" .

2. Testing

# Test OpenTofu in dev
tofu init
tofu plan
tofu apply

# Verify compatibility
tofu validate

3. State Migration

# OpenTofu uses same state format
# No migration needed, just rename
mv terraform.tfstate tofu.tfstate
mv terraform.tfstate.backup tofu.tfstate.backup

4. CI/CD Updates

# Update GitHub Actions
- name: Setup OpenTofu
  uses: tofu-actions/setup-tofu@v1
  with:
    tofu_version: 1.6.0

- name: OpenTofu Init
  run: tofu init

- name: OpenTofu Plan
  run: tofu plan

Best Practices

  1. Test thoroughly - Verify compatibility
  2. Update tooling - CI/CD, scripts
  3. Document changes - Migration notes
  4. Train team - New commands
  5. Monitor - Track usage
  6. Gradual rollout - Phased approach
  7. Rollback plan - Quick revert
  8. Stay updated - New releases

Conclusion

OpenTofu migration enables:

  • Open source license
  • Terraform compatibility
  • Community support
  • Drop-in replacement

Plan carefully, test thoroughly, migrate gradually. The process shown here migrates production infrastructure safely.

OpenTofu production migration from March 2023, covering step-by-step migration process.