In private cloud datacenters, Abiquo supports guest setup with cloud init or hypervisor tools. In public cloud providers, Abiquo supports cloud init, and in AWS it also supports provider setup tools. The Abiquo Chef integration uses cloud-init. Guest setup runs the first time you deploy a VM. The hypervisor tools guest setup also runs when you add a NIC. If the guest setup is not successful, the VM deploy or reconfigure will fail and roll back.

For private cloud datacenters, the guest setup functionality is as follows.

Functionality	Cloud-init	Hypervisor tools
Set fully qualified domain name (FQDN)
Generate a random password at deploy and optionally send by email and/or SMS to owner
Inject network configuration if no DHCP server is available.
Inject SSH keys into guest.
Configuration drive with environment variables and user-data presented to guest OS on an ISO disk.

- For Windows with hypervisor tools use a custom specification instead of an unattend file. See Limitations of a custom specification to configure Windows
- See Configuration drive

Configure guest setup

To configure guest setup, see:

And for public cloud, see:

Use guest setup to configure Windows instances in AWS

Chef uses cloud init

In private cloud datacenters, the Abiquo Chef integration now uses cloud init. You will need a cloud-init or cloud-base-init compatible template.

In all public cloud providers, Chef is always available and supported, even if you do not select the Guest setup option in the VM template.

Configure the Chef server for your enterprise as usual. See Abiquo Chef Integration Guide