Salt Open, 1st ed.
Automating Your Enterprise and Your Network

You'll see how Salt Open is duplicated with ArubaOS and IOS networking devices, which can be configured without the underlying OS. As you step through the configuration options, you'll learn how to run remote execution modules from the CLI before looking at stateful configuration using SLS files. Moving on, you'll learn how to configure the systems where you also need to monitor your devices and that is when reactors and beacons come into play. Creating beacons to alert the server when thresholds are exceeded, you will be able to create reactors to mitigate the issues identified by the beacons.

No of pages    8

Chapter Goal: In this chapter we will outline the labs systems used throughout the book and optional networking equipment before moving onto installing the Salt-Master Salt-Minions and providing basic tests

No of pages: 12

Sub - Topics  

1.     Identity Lab setup

2.     Install latest version of Salt Master and Minions

4.     Configuring Times Services

5.     Signing Keys

6.     Implementing basic tests

7.     Implement firewalling on the Salt Master

Chapter Goal: We have just one server and a Minion on the same server. We will now expand this to include additional Linux distribution and learn more about Salt authentication

No of pages : 8

Sub - Topics:

1.     Authenticating with Minion public keys and key management

2.     Automating key signing

3.   Locating the Salt Master

Chapter 4: Targeting Minions

Chapter Goal: Learn how we can target tasks to the required Minions in Salt Open

No of pages: 12

Sub - Topics:

1.     Salt Targeting

2.     Understanding grains and using them as targets

3.   Targeting using regular expressions and IP notation

4.   Creating Node groups and using them as targets

 Chapter 5: Working with Remote Execution Modules in Salt Open

Chapter Goal: At the heart of Salt we have remote execution modules and we stale a look at the construction in Python and how we use them and find their documentation

No of pages: 15

Sub topics 

1.     Using Modules and Functions

2.     Listing the salt module indices

4.     Locate command line help

5.     The big three: packages, services, and files

Chapter Goal: Learn to write and understand YAML files. Configure your command line editor for YAML

No of pages: 8

Sub - Topics:  

1.      YAML Ain't Markup Language

2.      Using Online Parser to process YAML

3.      Configuring the nano editor

4.      Configuring the vim editor for YAML and SLS files

Chapter 7: Writing Salt State Files

Chapter Goal: Create repeatable configurations using SLS files

No of pages: 15

Sub - Topics:  

2.      Jinja and YAML Parsing

3.      Creating Jinja2 templates

4.      Installing packages with Salt states

5.      Managing services with state files

6.      Delivering files with salt states

7.      Syntax checking state files

Chapter 8: Building an effective state tree

Chapter Goal: The top.sls file can be referenced as the inverted root of the state tree to include the required states for different systems

No of pages: 8

Sub - Topics:  

1.      Creating the top file

2.      Understanding state.sl, state.apply and state.highstate

3.      Targeting in the top file

Chapter 9: Creating Reusable State Files

Chapter Goal: Learn to implement states that fit a variety of systems

No of pages: 15

Sub - Topics:  

1.      Using variables and Jinja

2.      Using grains

4.      Using logic to remove reliance on external data

5.      Speeding the process with map files

6.      Accessing templated data

Chapter 10: Implementing Reactors and Beacons

Chapter Goal: The Salt Master maintain the high-speed message bus. Events are written to this bust and we can view the events to help understand and debug the salt system. Working with events we can configure the master to react to events using Reactors. This can move configuration management into the realms of orchestration. Taking this further we can configure beacons on Minions to send events to the bus when triggered by thresholds on the managed device

No of pages: 18

Sub - Topics:  

1.      Reading and Identify events on the event bus

2.      Configuring reactors on the Salt Master

3.      Configuring Beacons on Minions

Chapter 11: Using Salt-SSH

Chapter Goal: Where a long running Minion service is not desirable we can use salt-ssh to deploy configuration

No of pages: 8

Sub - Topics:  

1.      Salt-SSH

2.      Deploy key based ssh authentication

3.      Using Salt-SSH

Chapter 12: Deploy Virtual Machines Using Salt-Cloud

Chapter Goal: Using salt-cloud the single utility can be used to manage your virtual machine deployment irrespective of the cloud system used

No of pages: 10

Sub - Topics:  

1.      Managing VMs with salt-cloud

2.      Using salt-cloud with AWS

3.      Configuring providers and profiles

5.      Managing systems

Chapter 13: Scaling Configuration Management Using Salt-Syndic

Chapter Goal: Implementing Salt-syndic you add additional masters to the system that report back to the Master or Masters. This can load balance your Minions or act to traverse a network link

No of pages: 6

Sub - Topics:  

1.      Installing Salt Syndic

2.      Configuring Syndic on minion

3.      Configuring Minions to use Syndic

Chapter 14: Automating Network Infrastructure with Salt Proxy

Chapter Goal: Salt Proxy is used to connect to devices that don’t maintain a long running Minion such as network devices

No of pages: 15

Sub - Topics:  

1.      Configuring Pillar Data for Proxy

2.      Installing NAPALM modules

3.      Configuring Proxy Systems

4.      Enabling SSH on Cisco IOS

5.      Configuring NTP services on Cisco Devices

6.      Backing up Configuration on Cisco and Aruba systems

7.      Restoring configurations

8.      Using salt-sproxy as a Proxy Minion alternative