Cloud-init¶

Cloud-init is the industry standard multi-distribution method for cross-platform cloud instance initialization. It is supported across all major public cloud providers, provisioning systems for private cloud infrastructure, and bare-metal installations.

During boot, cloud-init identifies the cloud it is running on and initialises the system accordingly. Cloud instances will automatically be provisioned during first boot with networking, storage, SSH keys, packages and various other system aspects already configured.

Cloud-init is very powerful and users can send their own cloud-user data to cloud-init to accomplish customized configuration. See the examples here.