Salt - The New Configuration Management Tool

These are a PDF Printout of the presentation. The PDF Conversion didn't really go all that well, so I highly recommend looking at the HTML5 slides. The HTML5 slides can be found here:

http://www.justincarmony.com/slides/salt-intro/

While there are several popular configuration management tools such as puppet and chef, there is a new kid on the block: Salt. In this presentation we’ll learn about how salt uniquely approaches remote execution and configuration management and just how fast it is. We’ll show you how to get started up in minutes and easily manage multiple servers. We’ll discuss some of the differences between salt and others like puppet and chef. Finally, time permitting, we’ll discuss how to write custom modules to extend salt much easier than others.

So come see why Salt is one of the fastest growing projects on GitHub, and why small startups and even large corporations are making the switch to salt.

Transcript

1. INTRO TO SALTSTACK THE NEW CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM Presented by / Justin Carmony @JustinCarmony
2. Slides split up into multiple sections. Slides both vertical and horizontal.
3. Test Vertical Slide
4. ABOUT PRESENTER Director of Development @ Deseret Digital Media President of Utah PHP Usergroup 8+ years of professional web development Goofy dad
7. ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION Slides & code examples will be posted online Feel free to ask on-topic questions We'll have time for questions at the end Feel free to talk and/or contact me afterward the presentation
8. OUR GOAL Understand Some Server Challenges Facing Teams Basic introduction to Salt about what it does Live demo on how it can help solve common problems Get you excited to go try out & learn more about salt
9. LETS START WITH A STORY
10. YOU'RE A HAPPY DEVELOPER
11. YOU'RE PART OF A
12. SMALL TEAM OF DEVS
13. YOU HAVE A NEW WEBSITE
14. ON A SMALL CLOUD SERVER
15. YOU START GETTING LOTS OF USERS ...
16. ... AND YOU NEED TO QUICKLY SCALE.
17. YOU ASK YOUR BOSS TO HIRE A SYS ADMIN. "WE DON'T HAVE THE BUDGET!"
18. SO YOUR TEAM DECIDES TO ASK:
19. ... AND YOU START DEPLOYING MORE SERVERS ...
20. ... AND SOME MORE ...
21. ... AND MAYBE JUST A FEW MORE ...
22. UNTIL IT IS A GIANT MESS!
23. SCENARIO: JOHN GETS FIRED
24. YOU HAVE A DOZEN SERVERS HE HAS SSH KEYS ON HALF OF THEM.
25. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO ENSURE YOU'VE REVOKED HIS ACCESS EVERYWHERE?
26. THE PROBLEM: AD-HOC SERVER MANAGEMENT
27. THE CLOUD Doesn't Require a Sys Admin Simple to deploy many servers But complex to solve large scaling issues Long-term management requires fore-thought & planning
28. THE DEVELOPER Can relatively easily setup a production environment Typically doesn't know how to manage many servers long- term Busy programming, last priority is "sysadmin stuff"
29. THE BUSINESS Hard to justify a "Sys Admin" when devs can do "okay" job. Usually hit scaling problems before profitability
30. THE SOLUTION: DEVELOPERS NEED TO THINK LIKE OPS
31. DEVOPS We've been putting more dev into ops, but we need to put more ops into dev. Ops is a state of mind. — Theo Schlossnagle CEO, OmniTI “
32. NEED TO APPLY BEST PRACTICES FOR SERVER ENVIRONMENTS Source Control for Configuration Ensure Servers are Configured The Same Automate Upgrades, Changes, & new Deployments
33. INTRODUCING CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT
34. WHAT CAN CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT DO? Manage Packages Manage Services Manage Configuration Manage Files Manage Users
35. POPULAR TOOLS Puppet Chef CFEngine
36. SO WHAT IS SALT?
37. WHAT IS SALT SaltStack takes a new approach to infrastructure management by developing software that is easy enough to get running in minutes, scalable enough to manage tens of thousands of servers, and fast enough to communicate with them in seconds. SaltStack delivers a dynamic infrastructure communication bus used for orchestration, remote execution, configuration management and much more. — About SaltStack, SaltStack.org “
38. A DIFFERENT APPROACH Salt is a simple system that focuses on two things: Scalable, Fast Communication (Flow) Quickly get information / data from a server (State)
39. SALT BASICS Minions connect to Master via ZeroMQ Minions authenticate with master via AES (pub/priv) keys Master can send module commands to minions to execute Execution is in parallel Modules are just python modules
40. WHAT DOES THIS GIVE US? Extremely Scalable (~10k Minions per Server) Great Flexibility (just write a python module for new functionality) Simple, Avoids Complexity Great Building Blocks for Automation
41. BUILT ON TOP OF SALT Configuration Management Remote Execution
42. NEW / UPCOMING FUNCTIONALITY VM / Cloud Management Monitoring
43. 100% OPEN SOURCE Everything is open source! Apache License No "watered-down" community edition 8th Most Unique Contributors on GitHub in 2012 Extremely Open & Friendly Community
44. WHO USES SALT
45. INSTALLING SALT ITS SO EASY EVEN I CAN DO IT
46. BASIC SALT SETUP
47. SETTING UP THE MASTER Install salt-master via Salt Bootstrap, Pip, Apt, Yum, Source, etc Edit Configuration (i.e. /etc/salt/master) File Roots Pillar Roots Restart salt-master (i.e. /etc/init.d/salt-master restart) f i l e _ r o o t s : b a s e : - / s r v / s a l t p i l l a r _ r o o t s : b a s e : - / s r v / p i l l a r
49. SETTING UP THE MINIONS
50. Install salt-minion via Salt Bootstrap, Pip, Apt, Yum, Source, etc Set FQDN on the server (OR set ID Manually in Config) Edit Configuration (i.e. /etc/salt/minion) Set Master Server Pillar Roots Restart Minion m a s t e r : m a s t e r . s a l t d e m o . c o m p i l l a r _ r o o t s : b a s e : - / s r v / p i l l a r
51. VIEW MINION KEYS On the salt master, list the current keys u s e r @ s a l t - m a s t e r : ~ $ s u d o s a l t - k e y - L A c c e p t e d K e y s : U n a c c e p t e d K e y s : w e b 1 . s a l t - d e m o . c o m R e j e c t e d K e y s :
52. ACCEPT MINION KEYS Accept the key (view it before hand to make sure it's legit) u s e r @ s a l t - m a s t e r : ~ $ s u d o s a l t - k e y - a w e b 1 . s a l t - d e m o . c o m A c c e p t e d K e y s : w e b 1 . s a l t - d e m o . c o m U n a c c e p t e d K e y s : R e j e c t e d K e y s :
53. THAT'S IT! WE'RE READY TO ROCK & ROLL.
54. REMOTE EXECUTION "DO MY BIDING, MINIONS!"
55. TARGETING MINIONS Use "salt" command on master to communicate to minions Example: Test Ping to All Minions u s e r @ s a l t - m a s t e r : ~ $ s u d o s a l t ' * ' t e s t . p i n g w e b 1 . s a l t d e m o . c o m : T r u e
56. TARGETING TYPES OF MINIONS s a l t ' d b * ' t e s t . p i n g s a l t - L w e b 1 . s a l t d e m o . c o m , d b 2 . s a l t d e m o . c o m t e s t . p i n g s a l t - G ' o s : U b u n t u ' t e s t . p i n g s a l t - C ' G @ o s : D e b i a n a n d w e b * ' t e s t . p i n g
57. EXECUTE COMMAND ON SERVERS Example: Restart Apache u s e r @ m a s t e r : ~ $ s u d o s a l t ' w e b * ' c m d . r u n " / e t c / i n i t . d / a p a c h e 2 r e s t a r t "
58. EXECUTE MODULES ON SERVERS Example: Restart Apache u s e r @ s a l t - m a s t e r : ~ $ s u d o s a l t ' w e b * ' a p a c h e . s i g n a l r e s t a r t
59. LOTS OF MODULES Here are just some of them: apache, apt, cron, disk, file, mount, mysql, network, puppet, service, solr, state, test, useradd, win_disk, win_service, win_useradd
60. CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT KEEPING YOUR SERVERS CONFIGURED THE SAME
61. OVERVIEW Define a State Tree Assign Parts of State Tree to Servers Minion will download it's state definition from the tree Minion will compare its current state vs state tree Minion will make changes to match state tree & report back
62. WHAT IS STATE? Example using English: State Tree: Apache is installed & running Server Minion: Apache is not installed nor running
63. TOP.SLS FILE Defines which servers have which parts of the state tree applied to them. Example top.sls file: b a s e : ' * ' : - c o r e . t o o l s - c o r e . u s e r s ' w e b 1 . s a l t d e m o . c o m ' : - a p a c h e 2 - p h p 5
64. DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENTS b a s e : ' * ' : # S t u f f f o r a l l s e r v e r s d e v : ' * ' : # s t u f f f o r d e v s t a g e s t a g e : ' * ' : # s t u f f f o r s t a b l e s t a g e p r o d : ' * ' : # s t u f f f o r p r o d s t a g e
65. TREE MAPS TO FILES Base is your file_roots apache2 => apache2/init.sls core => core/init.sls core.tools => core/tools.sls
66. ANATOMY OF A STATE DECLARATION Example of a user definition j u s t i n : # # I D u s e r : # # T y p e - p r e s e n t # # F u n c t i o n - s h e l l : / b i n / b a s h - h o m e : / h o m e / j u s t i n - p a s s w o r d : $ 1 $ M G 4 P b s H 9 $ . w 6 8 M 3 y d / k U m E S w q 3 c R M 9 1
67. LETS INSTALL & MANAGE APACHE2 a p a c h e 2 : p k g : - i n s t a l l e d s e r v i c e : - r u n n i n g / e t c / a p a c h e 2 / a p a c h e 2 . c o n f : f i l e : - m a n a g e d - s o u r c e : s a l t : / / f i l e s / e t c / a p a c h e 2 / a p a c h e 2 . c o n f - w a t c h _ i n : - s e r v i c e : a p a c h e 2
68. JINJA TEMPLATES a p a c h e : p k g . i n s t a l l e d : { % i f g r a i n s [ ' o s ' ] = = ' R e d H a t ' % } - n a m e : h t t p d { % e l i f g r a i n s [ ' o s ' ] = = ' U b u n t u ' % } - n a m e : a p a c h e 2 { % e n d i f % }
69. APPLYING THE HIGH STATE You just call the state.highstate function s a l t ' * ' s t a t e . h i g h s t a t e
71. RANDOM TIPS FOR USING SALT COMMON PITFALLS WHILE GETTING STARTED WITH SALT
72. DEBUGGING SALT Run things in the foreground: # R u n m a s t e r i n f o r e g r o u n d / e t c / i n i t . d / s a l t - m a s t e r s t o p s a l t - m a s t e r - L # R u n m i n i o n i n f o r e g r o u n d / e t c / i n i t . d / s a l t - m i n i o n s t o p s a l t - m i n i o n - L
73. DEBUGGING SALT Run things manualy from the minion s a l t - c a l l - l d e b u g s t a t e . h i g h s t a t e
74. OTHER TIDBITS yaml chokes on tabs, make sure you use spaces I use sublime text configured to always use spaces Use 127.0.1.1 in hosts file to set FQDN Test what is the FQDN with: p y t h o n - c ' i m p o r t s o c k e t ; p r i n t ( s o c k e t . g e t f q d n ( ) ) ; '
75. YOU'VE BEEN INTRODUCED TO SALT NOW WHAT?
76. CHECKOUT MY SALT AWS DEMO Uses Vagrant & AWS to setup a test 5 server environment. https://github.com/JustinCarmonyDotCom/salt-demo
77. CHECKOUT SALT'S DOCUMENTATION & TUTORIALS Salt has some (and getting better all the time). very good docs
78. JOIN THE SUPER FRIENDLY IRC CHANNEL irc.freenode.net #salt
79. TRY IT OUT! Blog/tweet/discuss your experience
80. IT'S OPEN SOURCE, GET INVOLVED Very Pull Request friendly (They even have accepted PR's from me!)