Hrm, something looks a bit odd. In the collect logs, I can see that cloud-init found an OVF attached to the instance, however in the cloud-init.log there appears to be an existing boot of cloud-init already present: 2019-06-21 15:33:41,226 - main.py[DEBUG]: Execution continuing, no previous run detected that would allow us to stop early. 2019-06-21 15:33:41,226 - handlers.py[DEBUG]: start: init-network/check-cache: attempting to read from cache [trust] 2019-06-21 15:33:41,227 - util.py[DEBUG]: Reading from /var/lib/cloud/instance/obj.pkl (quiet=False) 2019-06-21 15:33:41,246 - util.py[DEBUG]: Read 7696 bytes from /var/lib/cloud/instance/obj.pkl 2019-06-21 15:33:41,273 - stages.py[DEBUG]: restored from cache: DataSourceNone Which looks wrong to me. I suspect this is some template image? And if so, it doesn't appear to have been cleaned up. Also, the journal is reporting errors: Jun 21 11:34:27.836406 mysql-mcm547807-109524397596 systemd[1]: Set hostname to . Jun 21 11:34:27.836424 mysql-mcm547807-109524397596 systemd[1]: sysinit.target: Found ordering cycle on sysinit.target/start Jun 21 11:34:27.836509 mysql-mcm547807-109524397596 systemd[1]: sysinit.target: Found dependency on cloud-init.service/start Jun 21 11:34:27.836536 mysql-mcm547807-109524397596 systemd[1]: sysinit.target: Found dependency on cloud-init-local.service/start Jun 21 11:34:27.836555 mysql-mcm547807-109524397596 systemd[1]: sysinit.target: Found dependency on open-vm-tools.service/start Jun 21 11:34:27.836574 mysql-mcm547807-109524397596 systemd[1]: sysinit.target: Found dependency on dbus.socket/start Jun 21 11:34:27.836591 mysql-mcm547807-109524397596 systemd[1]: sysinit.target: Found dependency on sysinit.target/start Jun 21 11:34:27.836617 mysql-mcm547807-109524397596 systemd[1]: sysinit.target: Breaking ordering cycle by deleting job cloud-init.service/start Jun 21 11:34:27.836636 mysql-mcm547807-109524397596 systemd[1]: cloud-init.service: Job cloud-init.service/start deleted to break ordering cycle starting with sysinit.target/start Jun 21 11:34:27.836655 mysql-mcm547807-109524397596 systemd[1]: sysinit.target: Found ordering cycle on sysinit.target/start Jun 21 11:34:27.836673 mysql-mcm547807-109524397596 systemd[1]: sysinit.target: Found dependency on cloud-init-local.service/start Jun 21 11:34:27.836696 mysql-mcm547807-109524397596 systemd[1]: sysinit.target: Found dependency on open-vm-tools.service/start Jun 21 11:34:27.836714 mysql-mcm547807-109524397596 systemd[1]: sysinit.target: Found dependency on dbus.socket/start Jun 21 11:34:27.836732 mysql-mcm547807-109524397596 systemd[1]: sysinit.target: Found dependency on sysinit.target/start Jun 21 11:34:27.836751 mysql-mcm547807-109524397596 systemd[1]: sysinit.target: Breaking ordering cycle by deleting job cloud-init-local.service/start Jun 21 11:34:27.836773 mysql-mcm547807-109524397596 systemd[1]: cloud-init-local.service: Job cloud-init-local.service/start deleted to break ordering cycle starting with sysinit.target/start Jun 21 11:34:27.836791 mysql-mcm547807-109524397596 systemd[1]: Created slice User and Session Slice. Which means cloud-init isn't quite working due to the image you're using which has created a dependency loop on cloud-init. This looks something like these bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/open-vm-tools/+bug/1793715 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/open-vm-tools/+bug/1804287