Guest Customization Using cloud-init

You can customize certain settings in a Linux guest operating system with the help of the vSphere Web Services SDK. The cloud-init utility is a standardized way to initialize a virtual machine when you deploy it in a cloud environment.

Guest operating systems can be customized in one of several ways, depending on certain cloud-init configuration flags and on the subtype of the identity property of the CustomizationSpec data object. The following table shows the combinations needed to achieve raw data cloud-init customization, LinuxPrep with traditional customization, or LinuxPrep with cloud-init customization. Other combinations are not allowed.

Table 1. Enabling Guest Customization Types
Flags	CustomizationSpec.identity	Result
`allow_raw_data: true` or absent (default=`true`)	`CloudInitPrep`	VMware Tools will work with cloud-init to customize the guest with the unprocessed `metadata` and `userdata` from`CloudinitPrep`.
`disable_vmware_customization: true` or absent (default=`true`)	`LinuxPrep`	VMware Tools will do traditional customization on the guest.
`disable_vmware_customization: false`	`LinuxPrep`	VMware Tools will work with cloud-init to customize the guest with configuration derived from `LinuxPrep`.

Use the following procedures to apply settings to a virtual machine by passing raw configuration data to the cloud-init utility. You will use the CustomizeVM_Task method with a CustomizationSpec that contains configuration data compatible with the cloud-init standard.