Instance metadata and user data

Amazon EC2 instances come with extensive metadata and user-data features that can help you manage your instances more effectively. In this section, we will delve into understanding instance metadata and user data, ways to access metadata, working with user data, differences between Instance Metadata Service version 1 (IMDSv1) and IMDSv2, instance identity documents, and several practical use cases for instance metadata and user data.

What is instance metadata and user data?

Instance metadata is data about your instance that you can use to configure or manage your running instance. Metadata includes instance IDs, instance types, IP addresses, block device mappings, and more. User data, on the other hand, is custom bootstrap data that you can provide while launching your instance. The user data is then executed at the time of bootstrapping your instance, which can be used to configure the instance or run as a script according to your use case at...