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Mastering SaltStack
Mastering SaltStack

Mastering SaltStack: Take charge of SaltStack to automate and configure enterprise-grade environments

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Mastering SaltStack

Chapter 2. Diving into Salt Internals

Now that we have covered the basic concepts, it's time to start looking at how Salt works under the hood. In this chapter, we will:

  • Discover how Salt manages configuration files
  • Look at how the Renderer system works
  • Discuss how the Loader system handles modules
  • Explore the State compiler, which drives so much of Salt

With a more comprehensive understanding of the internals of Salt, you will be able to craft configurations and States that take advantage of the architectural decisions that inspired the design of Salt.

Understanding the Salt configuration

One of the basic ideas around the Salt configuration is that a configuration management system should require as little configuration as possible. A concerted effort has been made by the developers to assign defaults that will apply to as many deployments as possible, while still allowing users to fine-tune the settings to their own needs.

If you are just starting with Salt, you may not need to change anything. In fact, most of the time the Master configuration will be exactly what is needed for a small installation, while Minions will require almost no changes, if any.

Following the configuration tree

By default, most operating systems (primarily Linux-based) will store the Salt configuration in the /etc/salt/ directory. Unix distributions will often use the /usr/local/etc/salt/ directory instead, while Windows uses the C:\salt\ directory. These locations were chosen in order to follow the design most commonly used by the operating system in question...

The Renderer

While the main Master and Minion configuration files must necessarily be stored in YAML, other files in Salt can take advantage of the wealth of file formats that the modern world of technology has to offer. This is because of the rendering system built into Salt, which can take files of arbitrary formats and render them into a structure that is usable by Salt.

Rendering SLS files

By default, all SLS files in Salt are rendered twice: first through the Jinja templating engine, and then through the PyYAML library. This provides some significant advantages:

  • Jinja provides a fast, powerful, and easy to understand and use templating system that follows a Pythonic mindset, comfortable to many administrators. It is particularly well-suited for managing YAML files.
  • YAML has a very shallow learning curve, making it easy to learn and understand. While it does support more complex syntax, such as parenthesis, brackets, and braces (JSON is technically syntactically-correct YAML), it is not...

Understanding the Loader

The Loader system is at the heart of how Salt works. In a nutshell, Salt is a collection of modules, tied together with the Loader. Even the transport mechanisms, which enable communication between and define the Master, Minion, and Syndic hierarchies make use of modules that are managed by the Loader.

Dynamic modules

Salt's Loader system is a bit unconventional. Traditionally, most software has been designed to require all components that are supported to be installed. This is not the case with every package, of course. The Apache Web Server is an example of one project that supports a number of components that need not all be installed. Debian-based operating systems manage Apache modules by providing their modules-available/ and modules-enabled/ directories. RedHat-based systems take a different approach: all components that are supported by Apache's httpd package are required to be installed with it.

Making such a demand with Salt is beyond unrealistic...

Plunging into the State compiler

Salt was initially designed as a remote execution system that was to be used for gathering data normally collected by monitoring systems, and storing it for later analysis. However, as functionality grew, so too did a need to manage the execution modules that were doing the heavy lifting. Salt States were born from this need and, before long, the engine that managed them had expanded into other areas of Salt.

Imperative versus declarative

A point of contention between various configuration management systems is the concept of declarative versus imperative configurations. Before we discuss Salt's take on the matter, let's take a moment to examine the two.

It may be easiest to think of imperative programming like a script: perform Task A and, when it is finished, perform Task B; once that has finished, perform Task C. This is what many administrators are used to, especially as it more closely resembles the shell scripts that have been their lifelines...

Summary

We have discussed how Salt manages its own configuration, as well as the Loader and Renderer systems. We have also gone into significant details about how the State system works.

Now that we have a solid understanding of how Salt works under the hood, we can dive into some of the more powerful components.

Next up, we'll use Salt to take advantage of the system administrator's long-time friend: SSH.

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Description

SaltStack is known as a popular configuration management system, but that barely scratches the surface. It is, in fact, a powerful automation suite, which is designed not only to help you manage your servers, but to help them manage themselves. SaltStack is used worldwide by organizations ranging from just a few servers, to tens of thousands of nodes across data centers in multiple continents. This award-winning software is fast becoming the standard for systems management in the cloud world. This book will take you through the advanced features of SaltStack, bringing forward capabilities that will help you excel in the management of your servers. You will be taken through the the mind of the modern systems engineer, and discover how they use Salt to manage their infrastructures, and why those design decisions are so important. The inner workings of Salt will be explored, so that as you advance your knowledge of Salt, you will be able to swim with the current, rather than against it. Various subsystems of Salt are explained in detail, including Salt SSH, Salt Cloud, and external pillars, filesystems, and job caches. You will be taken through an in-depth discussion of how to effectively scale Salt to manage thousands of machines, and how to troubleshoot issues when things don't go exactly the way you expect them to. You will also be taken through an overview of RAET, Salt's new transport protocol, and given an insight into how this technology improves Salt, and the possibilities that it brings with it.
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Publication date : Aug 19, 2015
Length: 306 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781785282164
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Table of Contents

12 Chapters
1. Reviewing a Few Essentials Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Diving into Salt Internals Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Exploring Salt SSH Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Managing Tasks Asynchronously Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Taking Salt Cloud to the Next Level Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Using Salt with REST Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Understanding the RAET Protocol Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Strategies for Scaling Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. Monitoring with Salt Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. Exploring Best Practices Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
11. Troubleshooting Problems Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

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1 star 100%
S. S. Sinha Oct 10, 2016
Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 1
I want to start with this first. This books adds no value to what saltstack website provides. I started learning salt stack for few weeks and after one week I was able to deploy it successfully with many states files. After two weeks of learning I was able to replace puppet with salt by just reading saltstack online documentation. I though this book will be able to help to do more complex stuff. But I am totally disappointed. Frankly speaking I just read the book for 30 minutes and found nothing which can help me to understand it more. It seems to me that best place to learn saltsatk is going through their website. May be I was expecting too much from this book and got too little.
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