You click 'run' on the OpenStack dashboard, or launch a new instance via the api.  Some provisioning magic happens and soon you've got a server created especially for you.

Did you ever wonder what magic happens to a standard image on boot?  Have you wanted to launch instances and tie it into your infrastructure with no manual interaction?  Cloud-init is the software that runs in most linux instances.  It can take your input and do your bidding.  Learn what things cloud-init magically doe
s for you and how you can make it do more.