This article provides information on how to customize virtual machine using Cloud-init metadata and user data in vSphere 7.0 Update 3.

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.x

Prerequisites

• Ensure that vSphere version is 7.0 Update 3 or later.
• Ensure that VMware Tools version 11.3.0 or later is installed.
• Ensure that cloud-init version 21.1 or later is installed.
• Ensure that Datasource OVF (cloud-init ver < 23.1)or Datasource VMware(cloud-init ver >= 23.1)is included in cloud-init Datasource search list.

 
1. Customize virtual machine using Cloud-init metadata and user data is supported by vSphere Web Services API (See vSphere Web Services SDK Programming Guide (7.0 Update 3)  ) and vSphere Automation API (See vSphere Automation API Reference ), there is no UI support for now.

2. Cloud-init metadata is a mandatory field in customization specification.

1. The length of metadata cannot be greater than 512 * 1024 characters.
2. The network config in metadata could be version 1 or version 2. Please refer to:

3. Metadata could be in JSON or YAML format.
4. Metadata sample in JSON format:

5. Metadata sample in YAML format:

3. Cloud-init user data is an optional field in customization specification, for details please refer to Cloud-init
   document for user data format: https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/topics/format.html

1. The length of user data cannot be greater than 512 * 1024 characters.
2. Please find user data example in Cloud-init document:

 

Walkthrough

Please find the "Guest Customization Using cloud-init " article on how to customize a virtual machine using cloud-init metadata and user data by vSphere web service API, it takes Ubuntu 20.04 as example.

Note:

1. If you want to disable cloud-init‘s network configuration capability and rely on other methods, please disable it as in below in metadata:

2. If network config is absent, cloud-init will generate a fallback network which is DHCP usually.
3. The instance id in metadata must be unique for each customization using this feature, if you want to re-customize a virtual machine using this feature, please make sure a different instance-id is specified in metadata.