Bootstapping

EC2 Bootstrapping is the process of configuring an EC2 instance to perform automated install & configuration steps 'post launch' before an instance is brought into service.

With EC2 this is accomplished by passing a script via the User Data part of the Meta-data service - which is then executed by the EC2 Instance OS

EC2 Command to view User-Data

TOKEN=`curl -X PUT "http://169.254.169.254/latest/api/token" -H "X-aws-ec2-metadata-token-ttl-seconds: 21600"`

curl -H "X-aws-ec2-metadata-token: $TOKEN" -v http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/

curl -H "X-aws-ec2-metadata-token: $TOKEN" -v http://169.254.169.254/latest/user-data/

Another way is by doing cfn-int a cloud formation template

CreationPolicy and signals are part of Cfn-int