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

Updated on 11 September, 2025

A guide for updating the Cloud-Init user data on your Vultr Cloud GPU instance after deployment.


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 Cloud GPU 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 your 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 Instances endpoint and note the target instance's ID in your output.

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

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

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

    console
    $ vultr-cli instance 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 instance without recreating it.

  1. Open your Terraform configuration for the new Cloud GPU instance.

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

    terraform
    resource "vultr_instance" "gpu" {
        # ...existing fields (region, plan, os_id, label, etc.)
    
        user_data = <<-EOT
        #!/bin/bash
        apt-get update -y
        apt-get install -y nginx
        systemctl enable --now nginx
        EOT
    }
    
  3. Apply the configuration and observe the following output:

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

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