SaltStack Glossary

SaltStack Glossary

Event
    A notice emitted onto an event bus. Events are often driven by requests for actions to occur on a minion or master and the results of those actions.

File Server
    A local or remote location for storing both Salt-specific files such as top files or SLS files as well as files that can be distributed to minions, such as system configuration files. 

Grain
    A key-value pair which contains a fact about a system, such as its hostname, network addresses.

Highstate
    The collection of states to be applied to a system.

Jinja
    A templating language which allows variables and simple logic to be dynamically inserted into static text files when they are rendered.

Master
    A central Salt daemon from which commands can be issued to listening minions.

Minion
    A server running a Salt minion daemon which can listen to commands from a master and perform the requested tasks. Generally, minions are servers which are to be controlled using Salt.

Minion ID
    A globally unique identifier for a minion.

Pillar
    A simple key-value store for user-defined data to be made available to a minion. Often used to store and distribute sensitive data to minions.
    
Proxy Minion
    A minion which can control devices that are unable to run a Salt minion locally, such as routers and switches.

Reactor
    An interface for listening to events and defining actions that Salt should taken upon receipt of given events.

Roster
    A flat-file list of target hosts. (Currently only used by salt-ssh.)

Runner Module
    A module containing a set of runner functions.

Salt Cloud
    A suite of tools used to create and deploy systems on many hosted cloud providers.

Salt SSH
    A configuration management and remote orchestration system that does not require that any software besides SSH be installed on systems to be controlled.

SLS Module
    Contains a set of state declarations.

State Declaration
    A data structure which contains a unique ID and describes one or more states of a system such as ensuring that a package is installed or a user is defined.

State Function
    A function contained inside a state module which can manages the application of a particular state to a system. State functions frequently call out to one or more execution modules to perform a given task.

State Module
    A module which contains a set of state functions.

Top File
    Determines which SLS files should be applied to various systems and organizes those groups of systems into environments.