Cloud-Init User Data

Our provided cloud images rely on Cloud-Init to properly configure your instance upon creation.

Cloud-Init handles such items as networking, hostnames, SSH keys, passwords, etc. Our default configuration should work for almost all cases, but you do have the option to customize your initial instance configuration using cloud-init user data.

What is Cloud-Init?

Cloud-Init is an industry-standard method for cloud instance initialization. It allows you to:

Common Examples

#cloud-config
packages:
  - nginx
  - git
  - htop
  - curl

package_update: true
package_upgrade: true

#cloud-config
users:
  - name: deploy
    groups: sudo
    shell: /bin/bash
    sudo: ['ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL']
    ssh_authorized_keys:
      - ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2E... user@example.com

#cloud-config
runcmd:
  - echo "Hello from Cloud-Init!" > /tmp/hello.txt
  - systemctl enable nginx
  - systemctl start nginx

#cloud-config
write_files:
  - path: /etc/myapp/config.yml
    content: |
      environment: production
      database: mysql
      port: 3000
    permissions: '0644'
    owner: root:root

Learning Resources

Cloud-Init documentation provides a variety of cloud config user data examples. We will update this page with some of our own as we encounter different customer scenarios.