OpenTofu Tutorial for Beginners: 18-Chapter Infrastructure as Code Course

OpenTofu is an open-source tool that lets you manage infrastructure through configuration files instead of clicking through cloud control panels every time you need to spin up resources. You write what you want once, and OpenTofu handles the deployment consistently across environments.

This comprehensive course will take you from zero to confident with OpenTofu, covering everything from basic Infrastructure as Code concepts to production-ready deployments on AWS and Azure.

What You'll Learn

We'll take you through OpenTofu step by step, starting with the fundamentals of Infrastructure as Code and installation, then moving into writing actual configurations and deploying real infrastructure.

The key to using OpenTofu effectively is writing clean configuration files using HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL), a declarative syntax that describes your desired infrastructure state.

OpenTofu works with major cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, and throughout this series, you'll see real-world examples of deploying infrastructure to these platforms, and you'll learn about the components that make OpenTofu's workflow efficient, from its extensive module library to its state management capabilities.

If you've worked with Terraform before, OpenTofu will feel immediately familiar, as it serves as a drop-in replacement for Terraform, with a more permissive open-source license and some unique features like built-in state encryption.

This series is practical and hands-on, where you will build real infrastructure on AWS and Azure, work with reusable modules, manage multiple environments with workspaces, and integrate OpenTofu into CI/CD pipelines.

We'll also cover state management in depth, such as local and remote state, state locking, and encryption, so you understand why state matters and how to manage it safely in team environments.

Who Should Read This Series

This series is for DevOps engineers, system administrators, and cloud engineers who want to learn Infrastructure as Code using OpenTofu. It's also useful for IT professionals who want to understand how cloud infrastructure is provisioned and managed at scale.

You'll need basic Linux knowledge and familiarity with cloud concepts, but you don't need previous experience with OpenTofu or Terraform.

This course starts from the ground up. Once you understand Infrastructure as Code fundamentals and HCL syntax, writing OpenTofu configurations becomes straightforward

Why OpenTofu?

Terraform has been the dominant IaC tool for years, so why learn OpenTofu instead?

In August 2023, HashiCorp changed Terraform's license from the permissive Mozilla Public License to the Business Source License - a move that introduced commercial restrictions and raised concerns about the future direction of the project.

OpenTofu was created in response, forked from Terraform's codebase, and placed under the management of the Linux Foundation.

If you've worked with Terraform before, OpenTofu will feel immediately familiar, as it serves as a drop-in replacement for Terraform, with a more permissive open-source license and some unique features like built-in state encryption.

OpenTofu maintains full backward compatibility with Terraform, meaning you can use it as a drop-in replacement without rewriting your existing configurations.

OpenTofu works with major cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, and throughout this series, you'll see real-world examples of deploying infrastructure to these platforms, and you'll learn about the components that make OpenTofu's workflow efficient, from its extensive module library to its state management capabilities.

What We Will Cover

Like our other courses on pro.tecmint.com, this series is organized into chapters, with each chapter covering a specific topic in detail.

The chapters are arranged in order, starting from the very basics: