Salt Cloud 0.8.7 Release Notes¶

Welcome to 0.8.7! This is a landmark release which adds two new cloud providers, one pseudo cloud provider, and an exciting, flexible new configuration format! Don't worry, the old config format will still work, and you can wait to migrate to the new format when you're ready. However, the old and new formats are not compatible, so don't try and mix them.

We would like to extend a special thanks to the folks at X-Mission for granting us access to their cloud so that we could develop the Parallels driver! Without their help, this driver would not exist. Please take a moment to take a look at their cloud offering:

https://xmission.com/cloud_hosting

We would also like to thank DigitalOcean for their help and resources while developing the driver for their cloud offering. The folks over there have been very friendly and helpful! Please take a moment to check them out:

https://www.digitalocean.com/

For more details, read on!

Documentation¶

The documentation for Salt Cloud can be found on Read the Docs: https://salt-cloud.readthedocs.io

Download¶

Salt Cloud can be downloaded and install via pypi:

https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/s/salt-cloud/salt-cloud-0.8.7.tar.gz

Some packages have been made available for salt-cloud and more on their way. Packages for Arch and FreeBSD are being made available thanks to the work of Christer Edwards, and packages for RHEL and Fedora are being created by Clint Savage. The Ubuntu PPA is being managed by Sean Channel. Package availability will be announced on the salt mailing list.

Added Parallels Support¶

As mentioned above, X-Mission was kind enough to lend us the resources to write a cloud driver for Parallels-based cloud providers. This driver requires only a user, password, and a url. These can be obtained from your cloud provider.

Using the legacy configuration format:

PARALLELS.user: myuser
PARALLELS.password: xyzzy
PARALLELS.url: https://api.cloud.xmission.com:4465/paci/v1.0/

Added DigitalOcean Support¶

DigitalOcean has been a highly-requested cloud provider, and we are pleased to be able to meet the demand. Only a client_key and an api_key are required for DigitalOcean.

Using the legacy configuration format:

DIGITAL_OCEAN.client_key: wFGEwgregeqw3435gDger
DIGITAL_OCEAN.api_key: GDE43t43REGTrkilg43934t34qT43t4dgegerGEgg

Updated Configuration Format¶

This is a massive change that we have been wanting for months to add. We would like to extend special thanks to Pedro Algarvio (s0undt3ch) for his tireless efforts, which included significant changes to the codebase.

The old configuration format will still function as before, so there is no pressure just yet to move over. However, the configuration formats are not compatible with each other, so when you're ready to switch over, make sure to switch everything over at once.

Luckily, the changes are not difficult to get used to. The old format looked like the following:

SOMEPROVIDER.option1: some_stuff
SOMEPROVIDER.option2: some_other_stuff

The new format for the above would look like:

my_provider:
  option1: some_stuff
  option2: some_other_stuff
  provider: someprovider

This update allows for multiple accounts using the same provider. For instance, if using multiple accounts with Amazon EC2, your configuration may look like:

my-first-ec2:
  id: HJGRYCILJLKJYG
  key: 'kdjgfsgm;woormgl/aserigjksjdhasdfgn'
  keyname: test
  securitygroup: quick-start
  private_key: /root/test.pem
  provider: ec2

my-second-ec2:
  id: LJLKJYGHJGRYCI
  key: 'rigjksjdhasdfgnkdjgfsgm;woormgl/ase'
  keyname: test
  securitygroup: quick-start
  private_key: /root/test.pem
  provider: ec2

Profiles are then configured using the name of the configuration block, rather than the provider name. For instance:

rhel-ec2:
    provider: my-second-ec2
    image: ami-e565ba8c
    size: Micro Instance

Likewise, issuing commands will reference the name of the configuration block, rather than the provider name. For instance:

salt-cloud --list-sizes my-first-ec2

This is critical for using multiple clouds, which use the same Salt Cloud driver. For instance, Salt Cloud has been gaining popularity for usage with private clouds utilizing OpenStack. The following two commands are likely to return different data:

salt-cloud --list-images openstack-hp
salt-cloud --list-images openstack-rackspace

Provider Aliases¶

It is also possible to have multiple providers configured with the same name. This allows for similar environments across multiple providers to share the same name. For instance:

production-config:
  - id: HJGRYCILJLKJYG
    key: 'kdjgfsgm;woormgl/aserigjksjdhasdfgn'
    keyname: test
    securitygroup: quick-start
    private_key: /root/test.pem
    provider: aws

  - id: LJLKJYGHJGRYCI
    key: 'rigjksjdhasdfgnkdjgfsgm;woormgl/ase'
    keyname: test
    securitygroup: quick-start
    private_key: /root/test.pem
    provider: ec2

With this configuration, you can then set up the following profiles:

development-instances:
  provider: production-config:aws
  size: Micro Instance
  ssh_username: ec2_user
  securitygroup: default

staging-instances:
  provider: production-config:ec2
  size: Micro Instance
  ssh_username: ec2_user
  securitygroup: default

Keep in mind that if there is only one configured provider with a specific name, you do not have to specify an alias. But if multiple are set up as above, you must use the aliased name.

salt-cloud --list-sizes production-config:ec2

Extending Profiles¶

If using the new configuration format, you will have the ability to extend profile definitions. This can make profile configuration much easier to read and manage. For instance:

development-instances:
  provider: my-ec2-config
  size: Micro Instance
  ssh_username: ec2_user
  securitygroup:
    - default
  deploy: False

Amazon-Linux-AMI-2012.09-64bit:
  image: ami-54cf5c3d
  extends: development-instances

Fedora-17:
  image: ami-08d97e61
  extends: development-instances

CentOS-5:
  provider: my-aws-config
  image: ami-09b61d60
  extends: development-instances

In this case, the CentOS-5 profile will in fact look like:

CentOS-5:
  provider: my-aws-config
  size: Micro Instance
  ssh_username: ec2_user
  securitygroup:
    - default
  deploy: False
  image: ami-09b61d60

Because it copied all of the configuration from development-instances, and overrode the provider with a new provider.

Extending Providers¶

If using the new configuration format, providers can be extended in the same way. For instance, the following will set up two different providers, each sharing some of the same configuration:

my-develop-envs:
  - id: HJGRYCILJLKJYG
    key: 'kdjgfsgm;woormgl/aserigjksjdhasdfgn'
    keyname: test
    securitygroup: quick-start
    private_key: /root/test.pem
    location: ap-southeast-1
    availability_zone: ap-southeast-1b
    provider: aws

  - user: myuser@mycorp.com
    password: mypass
    ssh_key_name: mykey
    ssh_key_file: '/etc/salt/ibm/mykey.pem'
    location: Raleigh
    provider: ibmsce


my-productions-envs:
  - extends: my-develop-envs:ibmsce
    user: my-production-user@mycorp.com
    location: us-east-1
    availability_zone: us-east-1