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Salt Cookbook

Salt Cookbook

By : Anirban Saha
3.5 (2)
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Salt Cookbook

Salt Cookbook

3.5 (2)
By: Anirban Saha

Overview of this book

If you are a professional associated with system and infrastructure management, looking at automated infrastructure and deployments, then this book is for you. No prior experience of Salt is required.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
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Preface
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Sections
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Free Chapter
1
1. Salt Architecture and Components
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1. Salt Architecture and Components
Introduction
Installing and configuring the Salt master
Configuring the Salt environment and pillar paths
Understanding and configuring Salt pillars
Understanding and writing Salt states
Understanding and writing the top file
Installing and configuring the Salt minion
Configuring environments and grains on the minion
Applying Salt states to minions
2
2. Writing Advanced Salt Configurations
2. Writing Advanced Salt Configurations
Introduction
Writing and retrieving pillar data
Using pillar data in states
Using grains in states
Using conditionals in states and pillars
Using Python functions in conditionals
Using iterations in states
Setting and using variables in states
Testing a state run before applying to minions
Configuring nodegroups
Targeting minions
3
3. Modules, Orchestration, and Scaling Salt
3. Modules, Orchestration, and Scaling Salt
Introduction
Using execution modules
Using state modules
Configuring templates
Using requisites
Using Salt runners
Orchestration with Salt orchestrate
Salt multi-master setup (active-active mode)
Salt multi-master setup (active-passive mode)
4
4. General Administration Tasks
4. General Administration Tasks
Introduction
Running commands
Setting host entries and grains
Setting time zone, locale, and kernel configurations
Handling archive files
Adding groups and users
Performing SSH authentication tasks
Scheduling jobs with cron
Managing volumes
Working with disks and mounts
Managing network configurations
5
5. Advanced Administration Tasks
5. Advanced Administration Tasks
Introduction
Managing package repositories
Managing packages using the default package manager
Managing packages using rvm, gem, and pip
Managing files
Managing services
Managing code repositories with Git
Managing code repositories with svn
Configuring alternatives
6
6. Managing Application Servers
6. Managing Application Servers
Introduction
Apache web server packages and services
Managing web server modules
Adding web server configuration
Web server security with htpasswd
Setting up Java for Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat packages, files, and services
Deploying the WAR file in Apache Tomcat
7
7. Managing Databases
7. Managing Databases
Introduction
Using MySQL packages, files, and services
Using MySQL databases
Creating MySQL database users
Running MySQL queries
Providing MySQL user grants
Using PostgreSQL packages, files, and services
Setting up PostgreSQL groups and users
Configuring PostgreSQL databases
8
8. Configuring Salt Cloud
8. Configuring Salt Cloud
Introduction
Configuring the Salt cloud environment
Configuring cloud providers
Configuring cloud profiles
Extending profiles and providers
Configuring cloud maps
Using post-install scripts
Launching, querying, and destroying instances
Performing general cloud functions
9
9. Managing Amazon Web Services
9. Managing Amazon Web Services
Introduction
Implementing security groups
Using elastic load balancers
Configuring DNS with Route53
Configuring Simple Queue Service
Deploying ElastiCache clusters
Configuring CloudWatch alarms
10
10. Salt Event and Reactor System
10. Salt Event and Reactor System
Introduction
Learning the basics of the event system
Listening to events
Firing events
Identifying and working with Salt event types
Integrating and configuring the reactor system
Using reactors for Salt tasks
11
11. Troubleshooting
11. Troubleshooting
Introduction
Troubleshooting the Salt master
Troubleshooting the Salt minion
Dealing with too many open files
Connectivity, DNS, and ports
Dealing with YAML configuration problems
12
Index
Index

Configuring environments and grains on the minion

In this recipe, we will learn about some advanced minion configurations, such as environments and grains. We will understand how they work and how to configure them on the minion.

How to do it...

Uncomment and edit the /etc/salt/minion file to set the environment parameter:

environment: development

Setting grains in /etc/salt/minion

Uncomment and edit the /etc/salt/minion file to set the grains parameter:

grains:
  environment: development
  location: datacenter1
  server_type: webserver

Setting grains in /etc/salt/grains

Create the file /etc/salt/grains and populate it as follows:

environment: development
location: datacenter1
server_type: webserver

How it works...

The environment parameter in a Salt minion determines which environment the minion belongs to. This parameter helps Salt to determine which directory path it should look for on the master to fetch the correct configuration for the minion as per the environment specified.

As we specified in this recipe:

environment: development

When the minion calls and requests the master for its configuration, it looks for the development environment configured on the master and, if it finds one, it then looks for its base path, which in our case is /opt/salt-cookbook/development. It then looks for the relevant files in this directory.

However, do note that this environment parameter is useful when the minion calls the master, that is, the pull mechanism takes place. When the master pushes the configurations to minions, we can specify the environment while doing so but it only tells the master which directory path it should serve the files from. However, it does not tell the master which minions to target. To target minions from the development environment when pushing configurations from the master, we have to use grains, which we will discuss next.

In Salt, grains are information about system properties that helps Salt to target minions and configure pillars and states based on these properties. Salt makes a lot of grains available to us by default, a few being os, cpu, memory, hostname, domain name, IP addresses, MAC addresses, and so on. However, this feature becomes more useful when we are able to configure custom grains to suit our needs such as location, server type, application name, database name, and so on.

Grains can be configured in a couple of ways. The first option is to configure grains in the minion configuration file, that is, /etc/salt/minion, and the second option is to do this in a different file called /etc/salt/grains. In both cases, grains are configured as YAML key-value pairs.

Setting grains in /etc/salt/minion

For the first option, that is, in the /etc/salt/minion file, we have to configure the grains as we have done in this recipe:

grains:
  environment: development
  location: datacenter1
  server_type: webserver

Note the grains key in the first line. This is because the file /etc/salt/minion has a number of other parameters, and we have to explicitly specify that this section is for grains followed by the actual key-value pairs that determine our custom configured data.

Setting grains in /etc/salt/grains

For the second option, that is, the file /etc/salt/grains, we populated it as follows:

environment: development
location: datacenter1
server_type: webserver

Note the absence of the grains key here. The grains key is not needed in this case as this file is only for grain data. Next, we added the key-value pairs determining our custom data.

However, we have to keep in mind that grain data is static. If the grain data is modified or new grains are added, the minion has to be refreshed for the master to see the new data. This can be done with the help of execution modules, which we will learn later in the book. As of now, a restart of the salt-minion daemon should make the new data available.

See also

  • The Installing and configuring the Salt minion recipe, to learn how to configure minions
  • The Targeting minions recipe, in Chapter 2, Writing Advanced Salt Configurations, to learn about how to target minions
  • The Applying Salt states to minions recipe, to learn how to synchronize minions with masters
End of Section 9
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