Enable Salt Minion Using VMware Tools

Salt Project is a Python based open-source software for event driven IT automation, remote task execution and configuration management.

For more information on Salt, see Salt User Guide.

Salt requires a salt-minion to be deployed in the guest. Salt specific guest variables are set on the host side per VM basis and subsequently read by VMware Tools inside guest. VMware Tools then downloads the salt bundle and spins up a salt-minion instance inside the guest.

Prerequisites

Supports only 64 bit OSes.
For Windows, Windows 8 and later versions are supported.
Note: Windows 2008R2 is not supported.
VMware Tools must be installed with Salt Minion feature. By default, this feature is enabled.
There are dependencies on installed packages in Linux (like curl and wget)

Procedure

Host side configuration per VM using guest variables
Host admin manages all the guest variable settings on the host side for a particular VM using VIM API or vSphere/VC UI.
- - Windows:
    VMware Tools Salt Minion feature is installed by default and can be modified in custom installation.
    For VMware Tools to create a salt-minion instance on a particular VM and connect the salt-minion with the salt-master, host admin must configure and set the guest variable for that VM.
    In vSphere host UI, select a particular VM, right click and edit settings. In the VM Options tab, select Advanced > Edit Configuration > Add/Delete parameter and set
    guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.desiredstate to present
    
    guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.args to <custom arguments to VMware Tools salt-minion setup script>
    For example:
    guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.desiredstate → present
    guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.args → master=1.2.3.4
  - Linux:
    Host admin must install open-vm-tools and open-vm-tools-salt-minion and then set the guest variable for a particular VM as:
    
    guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.desiredstate to present
    
    guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.args to <custom arguments to VMware Tools salt-minion setup script>
    For example:
    guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.desiredstate → present
    guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.args → master=1.2.3.4 id=12345
- Removing salt-minion
  In Windows or Linux, if the host admin sets the guest variable guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.desiredstate to absent, then VMware Tools removes the salt-minion instance in the guest VM.
  For example:
  guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.desiredstate → absent
- Checking the latest status of salt-minion inside the guest
  To check the latest status of the salt-minion inside the guest in the vSphere UI, use the guest variable:
  guestinfo.vmware.components.salt_minion.laststatus
Guest side configuration using tools.conf
The tools.conf file contains the configurations for VMware Tools in an .ini format. This tool looks for the salt_minion section and uses the configurations defined under that section. This file is stored at:

Windows - C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Tools\tools.conf

Linux - /etc/vmware-tools/tools.conf

Here is an example of the salt_minion section as defined in tools.conf:
```
[salt_minion]
master=1.2.3.4
conf_file=/etc/salt/minion
id=dev_minion
```
Note: Only minion config options are available in tools.conf. The desired script action cannot be obtained from tools.conf.
- Configuring the interval to monitor state change in the guest variables:
  VMware Tools periodically polls guest variables for the state changes. Default poll-inteval is 180s and can be configured in the tools.conf settings.
  [componentmgr]
  poll-interval=180 (Default value: 180s)
- Enabling and disabling component (salt_minion):
  - Guest admin can enable salt_minion by configuring the tools.conf settings.
    [componentmgr]
    included=salt_minion
  - Guest admin can enable all the components by configuring the tools.conf settings.
    [componentmgr]
    included=all (Default configuration)
  - Guest admin can disable all components by configuring the tools.conf settings.
    [componentmgr]
    included=none
Installing salt-minion using an install script
- - Linux environment
    On Linux systems, the install script svtminion.sh is a bash script with the following pre-requisites:
    
    - systemctl
    
    - curl
    
    - sha512sum
    
    - vmtoolsd
    
    - grep
    
    - awk
    
    - sed
    
    - cut
    
    - wget
    svtminion.sh --help shows the command line options.
    Usage:
    ./svtminion.sh [-c|--clear] [-d|--depend] [-h|--help] [-i|--install] [-j|--source] [-l|--loglevel] [-m|--minionversion] [-r|--remove] [-s|--status] [-v|--version]
    where ./svtminion.sh [-j|--source], specifies the location to install Salt Minion from. The default is repo.saltproject.io location.
    For example: URL location
    http://my_web_server.com/my_salt_onedir
    https://my_web_server.com/my_salt_onedir
    file:////my_path/my_salt_onedir
    //my_path/my_salt_onedir
    
    Note: If specific version of Salt Minion is specified, [-m|--minionversion], then its appended to source. The default is latest.
    
    Here is an example of the installing salt_minion as defined in tools.conf:
```
[salt_minion]
master=1.2.3.4
conf_file=/etc/salt/minion
id=dev_minion
source=https://my_web_server.com/my_salt_onedir
```
    Note: If installing from your private replica of the standard repository location for salt, use source=https://repo.saltproject.io/salt/vmware-tools-onedir/
  - Windows environment
    On Windows systems, the install script svtminion.ps1 is a powershell script. The only prerequisite for Windows is the 'vmtoolsd.exe' binary, which is used to query the guest variables data.
    To get help for this script, run the command svtminion.ps1 -h or Get-Help svtminion.ps1.
    VMware Tools script for managing the Salt minion on a Windows guest is:
    .\svtminion.ps1 [-Install] [-MinionVersion <String>] [-Source <String>] [[-ConfigOptions] <String[]>] [-LogLevel <String>] [-Help] [-Version] [<CommonParameters>]
    where -Source <String> is the URL or path to the repo containing the installers.
    This would contain a directory structure similar to that found at the default location: https://repo.saltproject.io/salt/vmware-tools-onedir/. This can handle most common protocols like http, https, ftp, unc, local
    For example:
    PS>svtminion.ps1 -Install PS>svtminion.ps1 -Install -MinionVersion 3004-1 master=192.168.10.10 id=dev_box PS>svtminion.ps1 -Install -Source https://my.domain.com/vmtools/salt
    Note:
    To see the examples, type get-help .\svtminion.ps1 -examples
    
    For more information, type get-help .\svtminion.ps1 -detailed
    
    For technical information, type get-help .\svtminion.ps1 -full

Fetching log information

Guest admin can fetch log information related to salt-minion from the following path:

Windows

Log File	Location
Log file for checking salt-minion status	C:\Windows\Temp\vmware-svtminion-status-{Timestamp}.log
Log file for installing a salt-minion instance inside the guest	C:\Windows\Temp\vmware-svtminion-install-{TimeStamp}.log
Log file for removing a salt-minion instance inside the guest:	C:\Windows\Temp\vmware-svtminion-remove-{TimeStamp}.log
Log file for checking runtime information after installing or removing a salt-minion instance inside the guest	C:\salt\var\log\minion log files

Linux

Log File	Location
Log file for checking salt-minion status	/var/log/vmware-svtminion.sh-status-{Timestamp}.log
Log file for installing a salt-minion instance inside the guest	/var/log/vmware-svtminion.sh-install-{TimeStamp}.log
Log file for removing a salt-minion instance inside the guest:	/var/log/vmware-svtminion.sh-remove-{TimeStamp}.log
Log file for checking runtime information after installing or removing a salt-minion instance inside the guest	/var/log/salt/minion