IT Automation with Saltstack

IT Automation with Saltstack

Saltstack (Salt for short) is open source software developed to automate the configuration of server systems. This IT Automation with Saltstack training course teaches attendees why DevOps is important  for enterprise systems management and teaches students Saltstack basics including states, pillars, and grains, as well as an introduction to event management with reactors and beacons. Attendees also learn about YAML and the JINJA2 templating system.

SALTSTACK TRAINING OBJECTIVES

All students will learn how to create:

• A basic Salt master and minion infrastructure
• States, pillars and grains to implement basic system configuration management

SALTSTACK TRAINING PREREQUISITES

All students should have some knowledge of Unix/Linux systems administration. Some knowledge of the Python 2.X programming language is helpful but not required.

SALTSTACK TRAINING MATERIALS

A Jupyter notebook will be provided.

SOFTWARE NEEDED FOR EACH PC:

• Anaconda software application as well as the Git remote source code control system
• UNIX or Linux is recommended
• For classes delivered online, all participants need either dual monitors or a separate device logged into the online session so that they can do their work on one screen and watch the instructor on the other. A separate computer connected to a projector or large screen TV would be another way for students to see the instructor’s screen simultaneously with working on their own.

SALTSTACK TRAINING OUTLINE

• Introduction
  • Salt Overview
  • The goal of Saltstack
  • Architectural overview of remote execution
  • Salt States
  • Grains
  • Pillar
  • Jinja2 and the virtual mechanism
• Introduction to YAML
  • Literals, scalars
  • Sequences, mapping
  • Examples
• Installations of Salt
  • Installation on Ubuntu
  • Differences between salt-common, salt minion and salt master
  • Installation on Amazon EC2
• Salt command line basics
  • Anatomy of a salt command
  • Output formatting in JSON
  • The jq tool
• Targetting minions
  • Globbing
  • Regular expressions
  • List matching
  • IP matching
  • Grains matching
  • Compound matching
  • Examples and exercises
• States
  • Package management
  • Services
  • Highstate
  • Exercises, examples
• Templating
  • Jinja2 introduction
  • For loop, assignments, escaping
  • Templating with Jinja2 in Salt, examples
• Pillar
  • Secure storage
  • VNC password deployment example
• Other interesting Saltstack concepts
  • Environments
  • Salt-cloud
  • Orchestration
  • Integration with Docker
• Conclusion