Deploy VMs on AHV using Salt-Cloud (SaltStack) | Nutanix Community
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We have begun leveraging SaltStack for machine states, as well as VM deployment on ESX using SaltStack's Salt-Cloud component. We are however rolling out a pilot deployment of Nutanix gear with AHV, and of course would want to be able to continue leveraging Salt for VM deployment.



There are ways of managing KVM via livbert, but this is probably not the right thing to try and do with AHV. Is there anyone out there who may be writing/written/using something that ties SaltStack into the Prism API instead?



If not, Nutanix, interested in writing a SaltStack module? 😃
Hi evannadeau



anelson wrote a blog post called Saltstack Setup for Nutanix on Acropolis a while back.



Anything additonal you can add anelson
evannadeau wrote:

There are ways of managing KVM via livbert, but this is probably not the right thing to try and do with AHV. Is there anyone out there who may be writing/written/using something that ties SaltStack into the Prism API instead?



Though based in KVM originally, AHV != KVM in many ways. One of those ways is that you should not try and use libvirt to manage AHV. The only supported method will be via our APIs. Should you decide to develop against Nutanix AHV, check out developer.nutanix.com and our published supported APIs.



You may also want to keep an eye our for our announcements around automation. You may be aware that we acquired a company called Calm.IO late last year. Lots of really cool stuff coming out of that acquisition this year.
Thanks for the reply's guys. I am familiar with those blog posts. I am hoping for a more direct integration with Salt-Cloud, but if it does not exist nor is being worked on, then perhaps I'll just have to keep learning Python and write it myself.



Thanks again.
I'm also interested in using salt-cloud to deploy nutanix instances. Saltstack has a number of providers and seems that nutanix should be one of them by now.



https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/cloud/#cloud-provider-specifics



Jeremy
Saltstack can certainly provide you guys services/training to accomplish this. Feel free to reach out to your local Saltstack team (just look us up on LinkedIn) or send an email to info@saltstack.com
How would saltstack provide training for salt-cloud integration? Salt-stack does not integrate with Nutanix currently. Are they going to write the code to make this possible? If so, why not open source it?



This seems like a generic response to a specific question.
Apologies my services/training comment was rather generic. Saltstack Professional Services can leverage the Nutanix API to make this integration a reality and our PS team also provides training on the Salt-Cloud in general for people who may not be as familiar with it. As to whether or not this will eventually get Open Sourced is really a matter of demand & contribution by the community. Our PS team works with customers that need a solution now that is not available because there is not enough community support for it.
Hello,



Salt Virt system supports core cloud operation like Inspection of deployed VMs. Salt 0.14.0 allow private cloud vms to be managed directly with Salt.



Salt Virt will now select a hypervisor to deploy the new virtual machine on and copy the virtual machine image down to the hypervisor. Now that the new VM has been prepared, it can be seen via the virt.query command:



salt-run virt.query



A test.ping will reveal if the new VM is running.



Thanks.
Thank you, this looks very interesting. This however might not work with Nutanix as it is tightly integrated with Nutanix Prism. Will VMs managed with salt-virt also be able to be controlled with Prism?
Is Salt-Cloud is using the Nutanix APIs to provision VMs (it would have to) then those VMs will be manageable via Prism.
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