How-To use OpenTofu for Crusoe Cloud Resources

Last Updated: March 23, 2026

Introduction

As OpenTofu matures as an open-source alternative to Terraform, maintaining a consistent workflow for high-performance cloud resources is vital. This guide shows how to configure OpenTofu to correctly load the Crusoe Cloud provider schema and provision a GPU-accelerated compute instance.

Note on Compatibility: OpenTofu is a drop-in replacement for Terraform. The Crusoe Cloud provider works identically across both tools. You can use the same .tf files and simply swap the terraform command for tofu.

Prerequisites

• OpenTofu installed (v1.6.0+ recommended).

• Crusoe Cloud Account: API credentials (access key and secret key).

• SSH Key: A public key (e.g., ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub) for VM access.

• Environment Variables: Credentials exported as CRUSOE_API_KEY and CRUSOE_API_SECRET.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Initialize Provider Configuration

Create a main.tf file. OpenTofu automatically mirrors the Terraform Registry, so the source remains crusoecloud/crusoe.

terraform {
  required_providers {
    crusoe = {
      source = "crusoecloud/crusoe"
    }
  }
}

provider "crusoe" {}

2. Configure a Compute Instance

Define a crusoe_compute_instance resource. This example provisions an L40S GPU instance.

locals {
  ssh_key = file("~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub")
}

resource "crusoe_compute_instance" "my_vm" {
  name     = "opentofu-gpu-node"
  type     = "l40s-48gb.1x"
  location = "us-southcentral1-a"
  image    = "ubuntu22.04:latest"
  ssh_key  = local.ssh_key
}

3. Initialize and Deploy

Run the following commands to provision your infrastructure.

1. Initialize: tofu init (Downloads the provider from registry.opentofu.org).

2. Preview: tofu plan (Validates the schema and shows the intended changes).

3. Deploy: tofu apply (Creates the instance on Crusoe Cloud).

Example

In this scenario, we use a data source to verify our environment before provisioning the VM.

Verification Block:

data "crusoe_ib_networks" "test" {}

output "provisioning_info" {
  value = {
    provider_source  = "registry.opentofu.org/crusoecloud/crusoe"
    available_networks = length(data.crusoe_ib_networks.test.ib_networks)
    instance_name    = crusoe_compute_instance.my_vm.name
  }
}

Expected Result (tofu plan):

data.crusoe_ib_networks.test: Reading...
data.crusoe_ib_networks.test: Read complete after 1s

Changes to Outputs:
  + provisioning_info = {
      + available_networks = 20
      + instance_name      = "opentofu-gpu-node"
      + provider_source    = "registry.opentofu.org/crusoecloud/crusoe"
    }

Troubleshooting

Additional Resources

• Crusoe Cloud Provider (OpenTofu Registry)

• Crusoe Cloud Official Documentation