Mastering SaltStack - Second Edition

Using Salt's external pillars

Pillar files can be very simple and convenient, and having the ability to template data is very powerful, but sometimes going that route is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. There are a number of situations where going outside of pillar_roots and using an external pillar fits the bill much better.

External pillars are their own type of Salt module, written in Python. You can create your own, but that falls outside the scope of this book. If you would like more information, check out Extending SaltStack, Packt Publishing.

Configuring the etcd pillar

Fortunately, a number of valuable external pillar modules already ship with Salt. For instance, a number of users have begun integrating the etcd configuration ...