.. _datasource_ec2:

Amazon EC2
==========

The EC2 datasource is the oldest and most widely used datasource that
cloud-init supports. This datasource interacts with a *magic* ip that is
provided to the instance by the cloud provider. Typically this ip is
``169.254.169.254`` of which at this ip a http server is provided to the
instance so that the instance can make calls to get instance userdata and
instance metadata.

Metadata is accessible via the following URL:

::
    
    GET http://169.254.169.254/2009-04-04/meta-data/
    ami-id
    ami-launch-index
    ami-manifest-path
    block-device-mapping/
    hostname
    instance-id
    instance-type
    local-hostname
    local-ipv4
    placement/
    public-hostname
    public-ipv4
    public-keys/
    reservation-id
    security-groups

Userdata is accessible via the following URL:

::
    
    GET http://169.254.169.254/2009-04-04/user-data
    1234,fred,reboot,true | 4512,jimbo, | 173,,,

Note that there are multiple versions of this data provided, cloud-init
by default uses **2009-04-04** but newer versions can be supported with
relative ease (newer versions have more data exposed, while maintaining
backward compatibility with the previous versions). 

To see which versions are supported from your cloud provider use the following URL:

::
    
    GET http://169.254.169.254/
    1.0
    2007-01-19
    2007-03-01
    2007-08-29
    2007-10-10
    2007-12-15
    2008-02-01
    2008-09-01
    2009-04-04
    ...
    latest

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