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As the note pinned to the channel mentions - the answer is basically always to use apply :-). In this case you can/should use both the suggestions: 1.

userData = pulumi.interpolate

...`` 2.

userData.apply(d => console.log(d))

The key is that because one of your inputs is an “output”, your user data will also need to be an “output”.

It finally clicked. I was so intent on being able to see the string from a log statement that I was attempting to use apply on the original output, not the variable I wanted the output to appear in. Thank you again for your help. Just for feedback, I think it would help a lot of new users if you included a functional example using cloud resources on the outputs help page.