Infrastructure using cloud-init is under risk of suffering from config drift. Cloud-init runs at (each) boot while ignition runs once, at provisioning time. Th

Infrastructure using cloud-init is under risk of suffering from config drift. Cloud-init runs at (each) boot while ignition runs once, at provisioning time. The benefit is reproducible deployments: Any deployment of a given configuration will reproduce with the same end result. Configuration is kept outside of the instance and does not drift. This is guaranteed across releases / versions (something we very explicitly and thoroughly test, for each of our releases). (Perceived) drawback can be that it's a bit of a paradigm shift for operators. While Ignition eliminates the need to meddle with instances after provisioning, it can be a bit of a learning curve to produce a node's full config beforehand.