Does the instance need to be completely empty for kickstart to run?

[dan]

Does the instance need to be completely empty for kickstart to run? What are the criteria for that?

[dan]

Yup.

Kickstart is intended to build the system up from scratch.

We check for API keys, users, and a few other things to ensure we can start with a clean slate.

If you already have an API key configured, you can also just script a set of API calls on your end as well. This is more/less what kickstart does.

From the Kickstart docs:

Kickstart will only run if no API keys, users or tenants exist, so you can safely leave this environment variable configured even after the system has been configured.