---
layout: docs
page_title: Vagrant Cloud-Init Usage
sidebar_title: Usage
description: Various Vagrant Cloud-Init examples
---

# Basic Usage

~> **Warning!** This feature is experimental and may break or
change in between releases. Use at your own risk. It currently is not officially
supported or functional.

This feature currently reqiures the experimental flag to be used. To explicitly enable this feature, you can set the experimental flag to:

```
VAGRANT_EXPERIMENTAL="cloud_init"
```

Please note that `VAGRANT_EXPERIMENTAL` is an environment variable. For more
information about this flag visit the [Experimental docs page](/docs/experimental)
for more info. Without this flag enabled, any cloud-init configs defined will
not be configured.

Also note that the examples below use the VirtualBox provider, which is the current
supported provider for this feature.

Below are some very simple examples of how to use Vagrant Cloud-Init with the VirtualBox provider.

For more detailed information about these config values and how to use cloud-init,
please read the [official documentation for cloud-init](https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html).

## Basic Examples

A cloud_init config can be defined as a "hash" of key values, or as a block. Below
are two examples of this for defining a cloud_init config:

```ruby
# Simplified form
config.vm.cloud_init content_type: "text/x-shellscript", path: "./foo/bar.sh"

# Block form
config.vm.cloud_init do |cloud_init|
  cloud_init.content_type = "text/cloud-config"
  cloud_init.inline = <<-EOF
    package_update: true
    packages:
      - nginx
  EOF
end
```

The first part will be read from a local file `./foo/bar`, and the second part
will be attached using the inline content. Both "block" and "hash" forms are supported,
and should work interchangeably.

Individual machines may have their own cloud-init data:

```ruby
config.vm.define "web" do |web|
  web.vm.cloud_init content_type: "text/cloud-config",
    inline: <<-EOF
      package_update: true
      packages:
        - nginx
    EOF
  end
end

config.vm.define "db" do |db|
  db.vm.cloud_init content_type: "text/cloud-config",
    inline: <<-EOF
      package_update: true
      packages:
        - postgresql
    EOF
end
```
