Salt allows scalable infrastructure management, including provisioning new systems and managing them over their lifetime. In this talk I'll show how it makes managing Debian systems easier.

1. Adding Salt to your Debian systems
julien.cristau@logilab.fr

2. What is salt?
●Remote execution framework
● Set of tools built around that framework,
including config management

3. Why salt?
●Written in python
●Using yaml for state description
●Great documentation
● Big and growing community
● Fast-moving

4. Why not salt?
● Young and fast-moving
●Written in python
●Rolls its own crypto

5. Terminology
●Master, minions
●Grain
● Pillar
● State
● Top file
●Highstate

6. Adding a minion
● Install salt-minion
http://debian.saltstack.com/
● Tell it where the master is
echo master: salt.logilab.fr >
/etc/salt/minion.d/master.conf
● Check and accept the key on the master
salt-key -a mynewminion

7. Remote execution
$ salt '*' test.ping
$ salt 'db*' cmd.run pg_lsclusters
$ salt -G 'oscodename:jessie' grains.item
kernelrelease

8. Config management
● Using yaml (by default) to describe desired
system state
● Templating with jinja
● Grains/pillars/... available for targetting and in
template context

9. Top file (2)
/srv/salt/top.sls
base:
'*':
- common
'role:webserver':
- match: grain
- apache

10. SLS files
/srv/salt/common.sls
basepkgs:
pkg.install:
- pkgs:
- vim
- less
- debsums

11. SLS files (continued)
/srv/salt/apache/init.sls
apache2:
- pkg.installed
- service.running:
- require:
- pkg: apache2
- watch:
{% for vhost in pillar['vhosts'] %}
- file: /etc/apache2/sites-available/{{ vhost }}
{% endfor %}

12. Other nice things
● Integration with cloud and virtualization APIs
with salt-cloud and salt-virt
● Provisioning, pre-approval of minion keys
● Automatic highstate on boot or on a schedule