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DevOps & Automation · Intermediate

cloud-init

The industry-standard tool for initializing cloud instances at first boot using user data.

Definition

cloud-init configures users, SSH keys, packages, files, and runs commands from #cloud-config YAML or scripts supplied as instance user data on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, OpenStack, and others.

Example

#cloud-config packages: [nginx] runcmd: [systemctl enable --now nginx]

Exam tip

User data runs at first boot by default; use it for bootstrapping, not ongoing configuration management.

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