Overview When I switched companies a while ago, I came across some a pattern in several Salt formulas that the CTO at my new company had written. …

Overview In the course of using salt for all sorts of use cases I happened upon a particular pattern of using the states top file that, in my opinionated view, is the most elegant way. Of the many ways targeting can be done in the states top file (see the SaltStack…

Problem Overview Recently, we wanted to have a file into which certain pieces of, potentially disparate, pillar data could be dropped into. The format of this data should remain as YAML, so using the file.serialize state function seemed a likely candidate to for use. I began testing with the serialize function setting…

Generally in SaltStack, state file are written in the YAML + Jinja2 format. However, other options are available. One of these options is Python. In this post, we will display how a simple state written in YAML + Jinja2 can be written in Python instead. …

Often when writing Salt related code, I need an environment in which ideas can quicly be tested and interated upon. I have found that Vagrant is usually suited perfectly for filling this need. …

Working for a client recently we discovered a ZFS server running that was not being monitored appropriately. Now you might be looking at this and wondering WTF? I was, and it took me a bit to figure out everything going on and why those failover disks didn’t kick into action. …

Git Cycle is a process that I created to help in small-ish environments where Linux servers are often unique little snowflakes and the admins are accustomed to making changes on the fly rather than through config management. …

Like many IT Pros out there, occasionally I have need to recover data off a hard disk. And while I have a copy of SpinRite which usually makes such recoveries possible, I do not have a spare computer to run it on. …

Today I’d like to go over a utility that I’ve been exposed to that has changed the way I move large files between systems. It is called UDR. UDR is a wrapper for UDT; which is short for UDP-based Data Transfer, utility. …