Salt Resources Framework

Each minion can publish multiple addressable instances of a managed component as Salt resources. Operators then target subsets by grain.

The Resources framework requires salt.utils.resources. On builds without it, the saltext.vcf.resources subpackage is dormant (__virtual__ returns False); use the flat-pillar config from Configuration instead.

Types

Type	One resource per	Pillar key
vcenter	vCenter Server	resources.vcenter.instances
sddc	SDDC Manager	resources.sddc.instances
nsx	NSX Manager	resources.nsx.instances
vcfops	VCF Operations appliance	resources.vcf_ops.instances
esxi	Standalone ESXi host	resources.esxi.instances
vcf_vm	Virtual machine (references a vcenter id)	resources.vcf_vm.instances

Pillar

resources:
  vcenter:
    instances:
      mgmt-vc:
        host: mgmt-vc.example.com
        username: administrator@vsphere.local
        password: secret
        verify_ssl: false
      prod-vc:
        host: prod-vc.example.com
        username: administrator@vsphere.local
        password: other-secret
        verify_ssl: false
  sddc:
    instances:
      sddc-mgmt:
        host: sddc-manager.example.com
        username: administrator@vsphere.local
        password: secret
        verify_ssl: false
  nsx:
    instances:
      mgmt-nsx:
        host: mgmt-nsx.example.com
        username: admin
        password: secret
        verify_ssl: false
  vcf_ops:
    instances:
      ops-prod:
        host: ops.example.com
        username: admin
        password: secret
        auth_source: LOCAL
        verify_ssl: false

Targeting

Each resource publishes resource_type, resource_id, and host as grains, plus type-specific live fields (e.g. name, power_state for vcf_vm).

# Minions managing vCenter resource 'mgmt-vc'
salt -C 'T@vcenter:mgmt-vc' vcf_vcenter_cluster.list_

# VMs labeled tier=production
salt -G 'tier:production' vcf_vm.power_off

# VMs labeled app=web (across every minion's vCenters)
salt -G 'app:web' vcf_vm.snapshot_create name=before-deploy

vcf_vm resource

Each entry references a vcenter instance by id; one minion can manage VMs across multiple vCenters.

resources:
  vcenter:
    instances:
      mgmt-vc:
        host: mgmt-vc.example.com
        username: administrator@vsphere.local
        password: secret
  vcf_vm:
    instances:
      web-prod-01:
        vcenter: mgmt-vc
        moid: vm-1234
        labels:
          tier: production
          app: web
      db-prod-01:
        vcenter: mgmt-vc
        moid: vm-1289
        labels:
          tier: production
          app: postgres

labels: entries become top-level grains. Live grains pulled from vCenter at grains(): name, power_state, cpu_count, memory_size_MiB.

Per-resource operations:

Function	Notes
info	Full VM record
power_state	Current power state string
power_on / power_off / reset	Power control
snapshot_list / snapshot_current	Snapshot tree
snapshot_create / snapshot_revert / snapshot_remove / snapshot_remove_all	Lifecycle (SOAP)
tag_assign / tag_list_assigned	vCenter tag association

VM auto-discovery from vCenter (phase 10b) is deferred pending discover() pagination in the Resources framework.

VKS handoff

The Supervisor cluster’s Kubernetes API is consumed via saltext-kubernetes. After vcf_vks.fetch_kubeconfig(<cluster_id>):

resources:
  kubernetes:
    instances:
      supervisor-prod:
        kubeconfig: /home/salt/.kube/vks-cluster-domain-c9.config

See VKS Bridge.