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Learning SaltStack
Learning SaltStack

Learning SaltStack: Learn how to manage your infrastructure by utilizing the power of SaltStack

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Learning SaltStack

Chapter 2. Controlling Your Minions with Remote Execution

In the last chapter, we installed our Salt minion and Salt master and learned how to send our first commands. In this chapter, we are going to expand upon what we learned there. We will learn:

  • How a remote execution command is structured
  • How to target minions in a variety of different ways
  • Grains and how they are useful for remote execution
  • The basic relationship between minion and master
  • Practical examples of how you can use remote execution to make managing your servers easier

Let's get started!

The structure of a remote execution command

If you remember, our basic remote execution command looks like this:

# sudo salt '*' test.ping
myminion:
    True

The basic Salt remote execution command is made up of five distinct pieces. We can easily see them if we look at the usage text for the salt command, which is as follows:

# sudo salt --help
Usage: salt [options] '<target>' <function> [arguments]

...

Let's inspect a command that uses all of these pieces:

# sudo salt --verbose '*' test.sleep 2
Executing job with jid 20140906205638826307
-------------------------------------------

myminion:
    True

Here's a list of the pieces of a Salt command, including the relevant pieces of the last command that we ran:

  • The Salt command: salt
  • Command-line options: --verbose
  • Targeting string: '*'
  • The Salt module function: test.sleep
  • Arguments to the remote execution function: 2

Let's briefly explore the purpose that each of these pieces serves...

Summary

In this chapter, we covered many aspects of remote execution, including the structure of a remote execution command in Salt. We also saw how to target minions based on a variety of data points, and we learned about the purpose of grains and how to use them in our targeting. Finally, we learned about common remote execution modules and how to use Salt to accomplish common tasks using these modules.

In the next chapter, we will learn more about how the code for execution modules is structured; we will even write our own custom execution module functions!

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Description

If you are a system administrator who manages multiple servers, then you know how difficult it is to keep your infrastructure in line. If you've been searching for an easier way, this book is for you. No prior experience with SaltStack is required.

Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Jan 27, 2015
Length: 174 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781784394608
Vendor :
Apache
Tools :

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Product Details

Publication date : Jan 27, 2015
Length: 174 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781784394608
Vendor :
Apache
Tools :

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Table of Contents

9 Chapters
1. Diving In – Our First Salt Commands Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Controlling Your Minions with Remote Execution Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Execution Modules – Write Your Own Solution Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Defining the State of Your Infrastructure Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Expanding Our States with Jinja2 and Pillar Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. The Highstate and Environments Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Using Salt Cloud to Manage Virtual Minions Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. The Reactor and the Event System Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

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Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon 4.3
(18 Ratings)
5 star 61.1%
4 star 16.7%
3 star 16.7%
2 star 5.6%
1 star 0%
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akochenower Mar 09, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
An excellent introduction to using SaltStack. Salt is extremely flexible and powerful. The content of this book is concise and focuses on best practices. If you need to hit the ground running with Salt, this is the book for you.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Nnamdi E. Anyanwu Sep 12, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
This book was excellent. Quick and easy read with plenty of relevant examples. I went through the book in about a weekend and a day and was writing production-level SaltStack afterwards. From completion of this book I was about to simply use the online SaltStack documentation as a reference and have been able to both use Salt at work as a developer, writing Salt States, as as a Ops/Sysadmin building out the infrastructure.For anyone trying to look into learning Salt, I couldn't recommend this book more.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
moniker Apr 06, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Really, really good and by far better than the official SaltStack documentation. Buy this - you'll need it to quickly get up to speed with SaltStack.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
S. H. Cannon Mar 24, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
This book introduces the fundamentals of using Salt in a clear and well organized manner. The examples are clear and easy to follow and provide the basics that can allow you to get your environment "salted" in no time. If you are interested in gaining a fundamental understanding of the essential concepts of Salt, this is a quick and easy to read resource that is up to the task.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Vinay Mar 23, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
An Amazing Book for Any One Willing to Devote Some Time To Learn This New Technology!!
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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