Extending SaltStack: Build and write salt modules

Joseph Hall

$19.99 per month

4.8 (6 Ratings)

Paperback Mar 2016 240 pages 1st Edition

Joseph Hall

$19.99 per month

4.8 (6 Ratings)

Paperback Mar 2016 240 pages 1st Edition

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Key benefits

Get the most up-to-date practical resource on writing new Salt modules and extending Salt
Learn through use cases and encounter both commonly-used modules as well as advanced ones
Effectively troubleshoot problems and hiccups encountered while building and putting modules to work

Description

Salt already ships with a very powerful set of tools, but that doesn't mean that they all suit your needs perfectly. By adding your own modules and enhancing existing ones, you can bring the functionality that you need to increase your productivity. Extending SaltStack follows a tutorial-based approach to explain different types of modules, from fundamentals to complete and full-functioning modules. Starting with the Loader system that drives Salt, this book will guide you through the most common types of modules. First you will learn how to write execution modules. Then you will extend the configuration using the grain, pillar, and SDB modules. Next up will be state modules and then the renderers that can be used with them. This will be followed with returner and output modules, which increase your options to manage return data. After that, there will be modules for external file servers, clouds, beacons, and finally external authentication and wheel modules to manage the master. With this guide in hand, you will be prepared to create, troubleshoot, and manage the most common types of Salt modules and take your infrastructure to new heights!

Who is this book for?

This book is for both new and existing Salt developers who are looking to build and write new Salt modules. Some prior Python development experience is expected.

What you will learn

Understand the working of Salt s Loader system
Write several of the most common types of Salt modules
Interact between different kinds of modules and build new ones
Submit open source modules upstream to the Salt project
Make Salt interact with third-party services and applications

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Mike S Jul 08, 2016

I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for a truthful and honest review. I am a SaltStack Certified engineer and have been working with Salt for about 2 years. I’m a sys admin by trade, not a programmer, and haven't previously tried writing my own Salt modules beyond the simple “hello world” type tutorial in the Salt documentation. That said, this book provides excellent guidance on how to approach creating your own modules of nearly all types. As a relative Python novice, at no point was I confused about conventions or what the example code was doing. This will be a very useful reference as I continue to develop our configuration management infrastructure and further bend Salt to my will and needs. Every environment is different and having the ability to add functionality to your tools is important.The book has a few minor rough edges where examples appear to have been revised and are obviously inconsistent (reference to sshd vs mysqld and vice versa in one of the first examples) but it doesn't detract from the point. There are also some stray pylint references that I assume are leftover from a proofreading process. Overall, this is a solid reference that speaks from experience, provides relevant examples, warns of pitfalls, and provides troubleshooting tips for when you get started on your own.

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Innocent Bystander Aug 07, 2016

Extending SaltStack by Joseph Hall is a fantastic resource if you have gotten your feet wet with SaltStack and would like to do more complex management, and extend the power of SaltStack to fully automate management of your infrastructure and manage the more complex use cases possible with SaltStack.Building on is previous work which will give you a strong basis in the overall platform, SaltStack covers the more complex use cases and capabilities that can help you fully realize the extensible power of this flexible management platform. From building custom modules, to using runners to move data or using beacons to build a custom monitoring system, Hall ties the various functions of Salt together and explains very well how they all work together to build the exact functionality you need.The book is intended for people with moderate to advanced knowledge of the Salt System but also does a good job of reminding you of the basics where necessary to illustrate how a particular function works or should work to accomplish your end goal.If you are looking to increase your knowledge of the Salt system or if you are looking to build a customized, automated management and automation platform, this book is perfect, and will serve as both a teacher and a reference as you move forward. The examples for each section provide real world code and use cases to help you learn the system's intricacies and master the Salt Management platform.As someone who's worked with Salt for the last several years, I was asked to review this book and provided a copy of the book for the review.

Megan Wilhite Aug 11, 2016

This book really helped me to understand some of the more complicated aspects of saltstack that the documentation only covers on the surface. The exercises and examples were great cases to help me to understand how to write modules in salt and the book was approached with someone has very little python experience which was very useful.The book focuses on writing modules and helping the user to understand how to write modules and troubleshoot them when it is not working. This has helped me to further understand salt and to troubleshoot problems within salt by diving into the code. All around great book which is a great way to learn how to write modules and understand more of the complicated aspects of salt.

Shane Lee Jul 21, 2016

I found this book to be an excellent resource for writing your own custom modules and extensions for Salt. This book explains how Salt functions under the hood. It provides clear, concise examples and code snippets that demonstrate how to setup your environment and write Salt code.The book begins by explaining that Salt is so much more than just a configuration management platform. Then it goes through many of Salt's functionalities and demonstrates how to custom extensions for each one. It provides tips on how to approach writing custom extensions. It explains the reasoning behind design decisions that affect the way you write your code.This book covers everything you need to write custom extensions for Salt. I have worked with Salt for over a year. This book made me realize I still have a lot to learn.

Janne Aug 06, 2016

One of the key points about Salt is it being much more than Puppet, Chef or Ansible. Any book written about Salt should - in my opinion - express this clearly and make the reader understand the possibilities Salt has. I think Joseph does this well in Extending SaltStack. It is not purely a book written by a developer for developers, but contains vast amount of good information for less coding users as well, like myself.To be really efficient with Salt in the long run, you either need to dive deep in to the actual codebase, navigate through the sometimes complex/vague documentation or read books like this one. For me personally, I learned a lot even about the most basic features like runners, beacons (which I have not yet used at all), debugging and the mind of salt-cloud (which I know Joseph has contributed a lot to).What I would've liked to see more of are practical and more complex examples of Salt usecases, although it might not be the subject of this book. But maybe the book could've been about writing your own modules which come together in the end. Maybe in the next book!

Extending SaltStack: Build and write salt modules

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