SALT

Salt is a different approach to infrastructure management, founded on the idea that high-speed communication with large numbers of systems can open new capabilities. This approach makes Salt a powerful multitasking system that can solve many specific problems in an infrastructure.

The backbone of Salt is the remote execution engine, which creates a high-speed, secure and bi-directional communication net for groups of systems. On top of this communication system, Salt provides an extremely fast, flexible, and easy-to-use configuration management system called Salt States.

For a list of Salt’s Napalm supported modules, please refer to the NAPALM-Onyx github repository.

Installing SaltStack on CentOS 7

1. Install Salt packages: 

   curl -L https://bootstrap.saltstack.com -o install_salt.sh
   sudo sh install_salt.sh -P -M
   yum install -y salt-master salt-minion salt-ssh salt-syndic salt-cloud salt-api

2. Install the Napalm library.

   yum install epel-release
   yum install -y python-pip
   yum install libxml2-devel libxslt-devel zlib-devel gcc openssl-devel libffi-devel python-devel
   pip install pyzmq --install-option="--zmq=bundled"
   pip install napalm

Configuring Salt

1. Open the /etc/salt/master file.
2. Replace #interface: 0.0.0.0 with interface: <machine_ip>.
3. Replace #hash_type: md5 with hash_type: sha256.
4. Find file_roots and pillar_rootsand and add the following lines below them:
   
5. Save and quit by entering: wq

6. Restart the Salt-master file:

   sudo systemctl start salt-master.service
   sudo systemctl enable salt-master.service

Configuring the Salt-minion File

After the installation, modify the /etc/salt/minion configuration file as below:

1. Open the /etc/salt/minion file.
2. Replace #master: salt with master: 10.99.0.10.
3. Replace #hash_type: md5 with: hash_type: sha256.
4. Save and quit by entering: wq

5. Restart and enable Salt-minion.

   sudo systemctl start salt-minion.service

Configuring the Proxy

1. Run /etc/salt/proxy.
2. Find the below attributes and fill them out as shown below:
   

Creating the pillar Directory

1. Create a pillar directory under /etc/salt.

   mkdir -r /etc/salt/pillar

2. Go to the /etc/salt/pillar directory

3. Create the top.sls file inside this directory.

   Per each switch, insert the following information:

   • DEVICE_ID

   • DEVICE_SLS_FILENAME

4. Create a new file: [DEVICE_SLS_FILENAME].sls
   Insert the following information into the above file: 
   

   proxy:
   	proxytype: napalm
   	driver: [DRIVER]
   	host: [HOSTNAME]
   	username: [USERNAME]
   	passwd: [PASSWORD]

   Example:
   

   proxy:
   	proxytype: napalm
   	driver: onyx_ssh
   	host: 10.209.37.247
   	username: admin
   	passwd: admin
      propt_name: switch20
      ssh_args:‘-0 PubkeyAuthentication=no’

5. Restart Salt on the server in order to use the new configuration
   

   systemctl stop salt-minion 
   systemctl stop salt-master 
   systemctl stop salt-proxy@<switch_name>
   systemctl start salt-master 
   systemctl start salt-minion 
   systemctl start salt-proxy@<switch_name>

Running Onyx Salt Commands on the Server

The following Salt command can be used:

1. Check if the switch is connected to the server running the Salt master:

   salt onyx1 net.connected 

2. Run any command on the switch using net.cli (example: using “show version”):

   salt onyx1 net.cli 'show version'

3. Get the switch mac address:

   salt onyx1 net.mac  

4. Get the switch arp table:

   salt onyx1 net.arp  

5. Get switch information (uptime, vendor, os-version, etc):

   salt onyx1 net.facts  

6. Get the switch interfaces details:

   salt onyx1 net.interfaces