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

Updated on 28 August, 2025

Cloud-Init enables the automatic initialization and configuration of instances during the initial boot phase. It runs user data scripts to customize an instance, install applications, and configure specific packages or services.

Follow this guide to update Cloud-Init user data on a Vultr Optimized Cloud Compute 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 Vultr Optimized Cloud Compute 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 the changes.
  1. Send a GET request to the List Instances endpoint and note your target instance's ID.

    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 instance's Cloud-Init user data.

    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 available instances and note your target instance's ID.

    console
    $ vultr-cli instance list
    
  2. Upload new Cloud-Init user data to the instance from 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 Optimized Cloud Compute instance.

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

    terraform
    resource "vultr_instance" "occ" {
        # ...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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