OpenTelemetry Tracing

OpenTofu 1.10.0 introduces support for OpenTelemetry (OTel) tracing, providing visibility into OpenTofu's internal operations. This feature helps you debug performance issues, understand operation flows, and optimize your infrastructure workflows.

Privacy and Security​

OpenTofu's tracing implementation is designed with privacy as the top priority:

• Opt-in only: Tracing is completely disabled by default
• Local-only: No telemetry data is sent to OpenTofu or any external service unless you explicitly configure it
• Your infrastructure: You control where traces are sent using standard OpenTelemetry configuration
• Zero overhead: When disabled, tracing has no performance impact

As the OpenTofu team emphasizes: "Although this builds on a project named OpenTelemetry, we are adding this support explicitly for you to trace your application using your tooling on your infrastructure." This feature is not intended to collect any data about OpenTofu usage patterns or user behavior for the OpenTofu project itself.

Quick Start​

1. Set up a tracing backend​

The easiest way to get started is with Jaeger, an open-source distributed tracing platform:

docker run -d --rm --name jaeger \
  -p 16686:16686 \
  -p 4317:4317 \
  -p 4318:4318 \
  jaegertracing/jaeger:latest

2. Configure OpenTofu​

Enable tracing by setting these environment variables:

# Enable OTLP trace exporter
export OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER=otlp

# Point to your Jaeger instance
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:4317

# Required for local development (skip TLS verification)
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_INSECURE=true

3. Run OpenTofu commands​

Now any OpenTofu command will generate traces:

tofu init    # Traces provider downloads
tofu plan    # Traces planning operations
tofu apply   # Traces apply workflow

4. View traces​

Open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:16686 to access the Jaeger UI. You'll see your OpenTofu operations broken down into detailed traces.

Configuration Options​

OpenTofu supports standard OpenTelemetry environment variables for configuration:

Basic Configuration​

Additional OTLP configuration options are supported. See the OpenTelemetry documentation for details.

Integration with Observability Platforms​

While Jaeger is great for getting started, OpenTofu's OpenTelemetry support works with any OTLP-compatible backend such as Grafana Tempo, AWS X-Ray, or Datadog.

Use Cases​

Debugging Slow Operations​

Tracing helps identify bottlenecks in your OpenTofu workflows:

• Which provider downloads are slowest?
• How long does each resource take to plan/apply?
• Where is time being spent during initialization?

CI/CD Pipeline Optimization​

In continuous integration environments, tracing can reveal:

• Parallel operation conflicts
• Cache effectiveness
• Network latency issues
• Lock contention problems

Multi-Environment Deployments​

For complex deployments across regions or environments:

• Compare performance across different backends
• Identify region-specific delays
• Track provider version update impacts

Future Development​

This experimental feature is actively being developed. The OpenTofu team is particularly interested in feedback about:

• Which additional operations should be traced
• Performance impact in real-world scenarios
• Integration experiences with different backends
• Specific use cases that benefit from tracing

Please share your feedback through GitHub issues or the OpenTofu Slack community.