Introduction to cloud-init

Managing and configuring cloud instances and servers can be a complex and time-consuming task. Cloud-init is the industry-standard open source tool designed to automate getting systems up and running with preconfigured settings in a repeatable way across instances and platforms.

Although it’s commonly used to automatically configure public or private cloud instances, it can also be used to deploy virtual machines and physical machines on a network. By automating all the routine setup tasks, systems can be initialized efficiently and reliably, whether you’re a developer spinning up virtual machines or containers, or a system administrator managing infrastructure.

How does it work?

Cloud-init works by taking the initial configuration that you supply, and applying it at boot time so that when the instance is launched it’s already configured the way you want.

Your configuration can be used and re-used as often as you want to get the exact same VM environment every time, or to deploy an entire fleet of machines in exactly the same way. You get consistent results with a fraction of the time and effort it would take to do so manually.

It can handle a range of tasks that normally happen when a new instance is created, such as setting the hostname, configuring network interfaces, creating user accounts, and even running custom scripts.

Related products

Cloud-init can automatically detect the source platform it is being run on (the datasource). It is widely-supported and works with:

• Most public cloud offerings (including Amazon EC2, Azure, Google Compute Engine)

• Private clouds

• MAAS and OpenStack

• Common virtualization and VM software such as LXD, libvirt, and QEMU

You can also use it on other Linux distributions (such as RedHat, OpenSUSE, and Alpine), or in concert with popular configuration managers (like Ansible, Chef, and Puppet). It even supports the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)!

To learn more about cloud-init and try it out for yourself, check out their tutorials.