How to Update Cloud-Init User Data on a Vultr Bare Metal Instance

Updated on 28 August, 2025

Cloud-Init enables the automatic initialization and configuration of instances during the initial boot phase. Cloud-Init user data runs a specific script's contents to automate the instance customization, software installation and configuration of specific packages or services.

Follow this guide to update Cloud-Init user data on a Vultr Bare Metal instance using the Vultr Customer Portal, API, CLI, or Terraform.

  • Vultr Customer Portal
  • Vultr API
  • Vultr CLI
  • Terraform
  1. Navigate to Products and click Compute.
  2. Click your target instance to open its management page.
  3. Navigate to the User-Data tab.
  4. Enter a script or cloud config in the Cloud-Init User-Data field.
  5. Click Update to apply changes.
  1. Send a GET request to the List Bare Metal Instances endpoint and note your target instance's ID.

    $ curl "https://api.vultr.com/v2/bare-metals" \
      -X GET \
      -H "Authorization: Bearer ${VULTR_API_KEY}"
  2. Send a PATCH request to the Update Bare Metal endpoint to update the Cloud-Init user data on the instance.

    console
    $ curl "https://api.vultr.com/v2/bare-metals/{baremetal-id}" \
      -X PATCH \
      -H "Authorization: Bearer ${VULTR_API_KEY}" \
      -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
      --data '{
        "user_data" : "<cloud-init-data>"
      }'
    
  1. List all Bare Metal instances available in your Vultr account and note the target instance's ID.

    console
    $ vultr-cli bare-metal list
    
  2. Upload new Cloud-Init user data to the instance using a file on your workstation.

    console
    $ vultr-cli bare-metal user-data set <instance-id> --userdata "<script-path>"
    

Cloud-Init user data can only be set during instance creation in Terraform and cannot be updated on an existing Bare Metal instance without recreating it.

  1. Open your Terraform configuration for the new Bare Metal instance.

  2. Add the user_data argument to the Bare Metal resource to run a script at first boot.

    terraform
    resource "vultr_bare_metal_server" "bm" {
        # ...existing fields (region, plan, label, etc.)
    
        user_data = <<-EOT
        #cloud-config
        packages:
          - nginx
        runcmd:
          - systemctl enable --now nginx
        EOT
    }
    
  3. Apply the configuration and observe the following output:

    Apply complete! Resources: 1 added, 0 changed, 0 destroyed.

Comments

No comments yet.