Thanks Vincent and Vincent,
So does this mean you still need to hard code the interface names (which for all intents and purposes may not be static across different hardware) into /etc/network/interfaces when using predictive network interface names? This isn't the worst thing in the world for the cloud use case as the virtual hardware is basically consistent- but I could imagine problems in other circumstances or if the PCI devices change over time.
Generally, to the debian-cloud folks, what are your thoughts here for Debian cloud images. The possibility that PCI devices can change is always on the table and we shouldn't assume it can't happen in any given virtualization environment. If the configs for networks are hard coded we would risk breaking instances. Is using systemd-networkd something Debian is going to support going forward instead of ifup?