2. The problem
A considerable amount of
time was spent on
commissioning virtual
machines and
customizing existing
ones
Development needed a
fast CLI based method
for provisioning vms with
a non domain restricted
syntax
Chart: Average approximates 2013-
600sec
Salt-Time
1h 40m
Manually
1h 30m
Manually
3. The solution
Automation
Select a tool that is easy
to implement , extensible
and rewarding to learn.
Help us provide a rapid
response that matches the
requirement.
Compatible with Ansible
but much more powerful
4. How it works
Step 1
Capture Specification
into a template
Clients specification
needs to be verified and
confirmed, it will then be
translated into a virtual
machine template.
Step 2
Link
Create a saltstack ‘salt-
cloud’ configuration file
Connects to the
‘vmware-template’
Step 3
Build
implement the SaltStack
command line to spin
the new virtual machine.
5. Why SaltStack !
implements the most up to
date APIs with ‘pyVmomi’,
these are compatible with
our target environment.
Active community
Our trial proved to us that the
community support was very
good and helped us
overcome issues.
Documentation
Excellent documentation, this
was found to be organised
and containing material or
high quality
versatility
A well designed tool relying
on the richness of Python,
can server the IT-Team in
different implementations.
Compatibility API
6. Salt General Structure
Standard
Master
Own comms protocol,
scalable can also
use ssh.
Minion
Implement instructions
Multi Master
Many Master (Nodes)
Resilience
Have master of
masters case in
complex structures.
Masterless
Minion only.
Minion delegate as
master for multiple
nodes, (Special
cases).
7. Salt-Cloud: Elements
SaltStack has several elements that are required by salt-cloud
In the instal several elements are needed on CentOS6:
Ensure EPEL repository and salt repositories are included
yum -y install update
yum -y install python-pip
pip install pyVimomi
yum -y install zlib-devel bzip2-devel openssl-devel xz-libs wget sqlite-devel python-devel- libxml2-devel libxslt-devel salt-master salt-minion salt-
cloud
Please remember that salt-cloud should not be installed via pip as it was detected to cause compatibility issues.
10. SaltStack Files
Salt-Standard
Standard files are meant for standard functions.
Configuration that impacts the nodes controlled
by SaltStack, similar to the way playbooks in
Ansible impact the target nodes.
These are located at ‘/srv/salt’. These files are
details next page.
Salt-Cloud:
Additional files that in our case come with
installing the ‘salt-cloud’ API specific to
SaltStack’s interface with Cloud providers, those
include in our case VMware & Amazon, they are
not limited to those but include RackSpace,
digital ocean, KVM and much more.
Located @ /etc/salt/: cloud.providers.d,
cloud.profiles.d
11. Salt Cloud folder components
Salt Cloud structure After installing ‘Salt-Cloud’ one would notice the
following components added. The two that are
important for the basic interaction of SaltStack
with vmware Esxi are
1. cloud.providers.d
2. cloud.profiles.d
12. Salt-Cloud files Purpose!
Looking at the newly generated ‘salt cloud’ folders & files to verify their purposes
cloud.providers.d: vmware.conf, contains the login credentials to vmware vcenter, typical login and password for an account
that has sufficient rights to create and delete virtual machines or whatever operations this setup is expected to execute.
cloud.profiles.d: Specifications for the vms to be created.
Other Important components: ‘vmware.py’ is an important python script, it uses pyVimomi, the salt system will not function
without it, it was found that it will be added by the repos on Centos but not Ubuntu, so Ununtu users can add this manually and
download it from github. The locations for it are:
On Ubuntu 14.04: /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/salt/cloud/clouds/ On CentOS7: /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/sos/plugins/
15. SALT-CLOUD: Administrative Commands
The command used to create the virtual machines is as below:
tttthihsss
after the -p one would specify the profile used , this line for the profile comes from the first line in the configuration file that specify the vm specification and
is included in ‘/etc/salt/cloud.profiles,d/ The first line from that configuration file is below, it highlight where the line has come from:
After that comes the name we intend to give to the virtual machine. ‘dev01.example.com’ that will show on vcenter as the machine is being built, that will
also be given to the folder where is will sit. Please note this will not impact the name of the vm within its own operating system as that will need to be
specified within the configuration file. The ‘-lL’ flag will be very useful to include, it will enable one to be capture the errors . It’s essential to restart the ‘salt-
master’ service upon making changes to refresh.
Useful commands:
salt-cloud --query # This will give details about the vms created
salt-cloud -p dev01 dev02 # One can create several vms with one command
salt-cloud -d dev01 dev02 # One can also destroy several vms at the same time
salt-cloud -F # List all vms and templates on all configured providers
16. Dependencies
VMWARE-Tools has a number of related packages. This used to enable the customization of a virtual machine.
This involves taking a vm or a template, cloning a new one from it the giving the new one a name, network
configuration files and packages.
It’s important to know that after reading the api for ‘vmware’ that we cannot so far create a vm from scratch, so far
we can only clone from a vm or a template.
Traditionally vmware provided the vmware-tools, this has now been handed over to the open source community
and is provided in the following packages:
Remove the network adapter configuration from the gold image and implement the changes below on it:
(On CentOS 6): install libmspack
open-vm-tools
open-vm-tools-devel
open-vm-tools-desktop
open-vm-tools-debuginfo
open-vm-tools-deploypkg (released by vmware and is essential )
change /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules remove the reference related to the mac address
completely, the line will look as below:
SUBSYSTEM==”net”, ACTION==”add”, DRIVERS==”VMXNET3”, ATTR{type}==”1”, KERNEL==”eth*”,
NAME=”eth0”
chkconfig vmtoolsd enable
service vmtoolsd start
17. Dependencies ‘VMWARE-Tools
CentOS 7 & Ubuntu 14.04
On the gold image, (VM or template one will clone from):
Will rely on %100 open source packages, ‘open-vm-tools’ in the case of CentOS, RHEL, Oracle Linux,
Scientific Linux and Fedora, one needs to ensure they have added the ‘EPEL’ repositories. It’s
recommended that one keeps a golden image with a working version of ‘open-vm-tools’ and experiment
with the latest ‘open-vm-tools’ separately as it’s likely to show some compatibility issues.
remove the network adapter configuration
In the location ‘/etc/udev/70-persistent-net.rules’
The line should be as such:
SUBSYSTEM=”net”, ACTION==”add”, DRIVERS==”vmxnet3”, ATTR{type}==”1”, KERNEL==”eth*”,
NAME==”eth0”
One can add this line as many times as they have network adapters on the vm. The driver ‘VMXNET3’ is
the latest in vmware and the most recommended. The older network driver “e1000” may still be used
and needs to be referenced appropriately.
systemctl enable vmtoolsd
systemctl start vmtoolsd
