Salt 3004 (Silicon) Is Here!
The next major release of Salt, 3004, was just released. There are some exciting additions to this new release that we would like to highlight. For all other changes, you can look at the release notes here: https://docs.saltproject.io/en/latest/topics/releases/3004.html
Delta Proxy is now Open Source!
https://github.com/saltstack/salt/pull/60090)
One exciting addition to the Silicon release is the inclusion of the Delta Proxy, which was previously a commercial offering by SaltStack. Proxy minions allow Salt to interact with devices that are unable to run a native Salt minion but can appear to the Salt master like regular Salt minions. Depending on the environment, the number of running proxy minion processes needed can add up very quickly for each device that needs to be managed, as well as the resources needed by each of these processes. The Delta Proxy solves these problems, running a single proxy minion process and then acting as a gateway or router sending the provided commands to the desired device. Enabling it is as simple as providing the configuration “metaproxy: deltaproxy” in /etc./salt/proxy and including the pillar files for the desired devices in the pillar file for the Delta proxy “control” proxy. Because the delta proxy is a drop-in replacement for the existing Salt proxy code, existing Salt proxy minions are available to be subproxy minions of a Delta proxy control proxy.
Salt Extensions Detected without Restart
https://github.com/saltstack/salt/pull/60214
Salt will now detect an installed Salt Extension without the need to restart a daemon (salt-master, salt-minion, etc)
Rocky Linux Support
https://github.com/saltstack/salt/pull/59682
Support for the new Rocky Linux OS was added in 3004. This change added grains support for Rocky Linux which allows you to use modules specific to the platform.
Netbox Pillar Improvements
https://github.com/saltstack/salt/pull/59500
The Netbox pillar has added support for querying virtual machines, devices, minion interfaces, and associated IP addresses. A lot of effort also went into improving the documentation for the Netbox Pillar.
Allow Salt to Install Anywhere on Windows
https://github.com/saltstack/salt/pull/60267
Users can now install Salt on Windows from anywhere.
Windows and Python3.8
https://github.com/saltstack/salt/pull/59870
The Windows packages are now being built with Python3.8 by default.
The UUID grains are now available on Windows
https://github.com/saltstack/salt/pull/59928
Adds the UUID grain on Windows, to mirror the behavior on Linux.
Detect AArch64 extension of ARM Architecture
https://github.com/saltstack/salt/pull/59915
There is now a salt utility that can detect the AArch64 64-bit extension of the ARM architecture.
Additionally, we wanted to also bring your attention to some other exciting additions, announcements, and projects ahead related to the 3004 release.
Python 2 Releases, no more
The 3000 releases went into Extended Life Support on August 31, 2021. Since the 3000 release was the last to support python2, we are no longer releasing bug fixes or security fixes for any Python 2 releases going forward. This will allow the Salt Project to focus on only Python 3 going forward.
Salt Extensions
A lot of effort will continue towards maintaining and improving the new Salt Extensions project (https://github.com/saltstack/salt-extension) This project makes it easy to break out Salt modules, states, etc. into their own project. You can look at this site https://extensions.saltproject.io to view all of the current Salt Extensions and feel free to create and maintain your very own Salt Extension.
Tiamat Packages – Beta
We are working on converting to using [Tiamat](https://gitlab.com/saltstack/pop/tiamat) to build our Salt Packages. They are self-contained binaries, which means you no longer need python on your system to install Salt, it will be included. These packages are still in Beta, but we would like for any extra testing. The instruction to test current Tiamat packages or build your own are located here: https://gitlab.com/saltstack/open/salt-pkg/-/blob/master/README.md
Thanks for all the contributions to this release!