Cloud-init

Cloud-init documentation

Cloud-init is the industry standard multi-distribution method for cross-platform cloud instance initialisation. 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 provides the necessary glue between launching a cloud instance and connecting to it so that it works as expected.