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Learning SaltStack
Learning SaltStack

Learning SaltStack: Build, manage, and secure your infrastructure with the power of SaltStack , Second Edition

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Learning SaltStack

Chapter 2. Controlling Your Minions with Remote Execution

In the previous chapter, we installed our Salt minion and Salt master and learned how to send our first commands. We're ready to control all the systems in our infrastructure from a central server, our Salt master.

In this chapter, we are going to expand upon what we discussed there. You will learn the following:

  • How a remote execution command is structured
  • How to target minions in various 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 20160218032023792688
-------------------------------------------

myminion:
    True

Here are 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.

Command-line...

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 you learned about the purpose of grains and how to use them in our targeting. Finally, you learned about common remote execution modules and how to use Salt to accomplish common tasks using these modules.

In the next chapter, you 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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Key benefits

  • First book in the market to incorporate all the latest features of SaltStack.
  • Leverage the power of SaltStack for building, managing and securing your infrastructure.
  • Effectively use commands and control the state of your infrastructure in a jiffy.

Description

SaltStack is one of the best infrastructure management platforms available. It provides powerful tools for defining and enforcing the state of your infrastructure in a clear, concise way. With this book learn how to use these tools for your own infrastructure by understanding the core pieces of Salt. In this book we will take you from the initial installation of Salt, through running their first commands, and then talk about extending Salt for individual use cases. From there you will explore the state system inside of Salt, learning to define the desired state of our infrastructure in such a way that Salt can enforce that state with a single command. Finally, you will learn about some of the additional tools that salt provides, including salt-cloud, the reactor, and the event system. We?ll finish by exploring how to get involved with salt and what'?s new in the salt community. Finally, by the end of the book, you'll be able to build a reliable, scalable, secure, high-performance infrastructure and fully utilize the power of cloud computing.

Who is this book for?

This book is aimed at System Administrators who are looking forward to manage their infrastructure using SaltStack with no prior knowledge about it.

What you will learn

  • Install Salt on your servers
  • Run commands on all or some of your minions instantly from a central managing server
  • Write custom Salt modules to handle your infrastructure's unique needs
  • Define the state of your infrastructure and use Salt to enforce that state.
  • Create platform-agnostic state definitions for greater flexibility and power
  • Manage virtual servers on public or private clouds using Salt Cloud
  • Use the event system in Salt to create a reactive and self-healing infrastructure
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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Jun 30, 2016
Length: 202 pages
Edition : 2nd
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781785881909
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Product Details

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Length: 202 pages
Edition : 2nd
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781785881909
Concepts :
Tools :

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Learning SaltStack
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Table of Contents

11 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
9. Security Best Practices in Salt Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. How Can I Get Involved? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.6
(5 Ratings)
5 star 40%
4 star 20%
3 star 20%
2 star 0%
1 star 20%
CKH Aug 30, 2016
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
This is a well-written book with plenty of great examples! I discovered as I was reading and exploring the Salt ecosystem that the author is one of the leading contributors for Salt on GitHub, forums, etc. and it shows; Myers is in his element (pun intended) and the book reflects that.I read some other O'Reilly book before reading this one and understood Salt far better after reading this one. Myers takes you through core Salt functions from getting started with the Salt execution engine through States, the Salt Pillar, using Jinja, the Event system and Reactor. He also covers Salt Cloud, security & best practices and contributing to the project.My one request for the next edition is coverage of Beacons.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Brian Adriance Sep 01, 2017
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Very good introduction to SaltStack. It has a few extra good tidbits that i did not find in the docs (maybe it was there, just buried) or in the tutorial. I ended up getting my entire team to read this book as well.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
nazareno Oct 12, 2017
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
It's rather basic, I am using it as a sort of reference. I was expecting to find something new in the new edition but it wasn't the case.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Mr Bill Feb 09, 2020
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
This is a good beginner book, but it's too short to complete its goal of getting you rolling with SaltStack. It needs to be about double the length, with more details and examples. It's enough to teach you what you don't know, and then you need to google it from there. I don't regret buying this book, but I did need to follow this one up with Mastering SaltStack.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
trudesea Nov 13, 2017
Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 1
Was disappointed that 90% of the material in this book is available in the online documentation and tutorials.. Hoped that there would be some fresh information or different points of view on how to do things, but most info looks like a copy/paste from the freely available docs/tutorials.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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