In general, orchestration is an automated coordination and arrangement of systems. Orchestrate runner is used to perform the orchestration in SaltStack.

Orchestrate Runner

he Orchestrate Runner offers all the functionality of the OverState (previous system). It is originally called as the state.sls runner. This orchestrate runner is used to generalize the Salt state system to a Salt master context.

The state.sls and the state.highstate functions are executed on each Salt minion, but the state.orchestrate runner is executed on the master. The state.orchestrate runner allows you to manage your entire infrastructure as state fully. Let us understand how to go through a simple execution process.

Simple Execution

The Orchestrate Runner command is same as the state.sls function, but you can execute it with the “salt-run” instead of salt.

Assume that you have a sample.sls file located at /srv/salt/orch/samples.sls. Add the following code in that file.

sample.sls

install_nginx:
   salt.state:
      - tgt: ''web*''
      - sls:
         - nginx

The following command is used to run on the master and it will apply the states defined in that file.

salt-run state.orchestrate orch.sample

It will produce the following output −

saltmaster.local_master:
----------
   ID: install_nginx
   Function: salt.state
   Result: True
   Comment: States ran successfully.
   Started: 11:54:56.308078
   Duration: 63.401 ms
   Changes:

Summary for saltmaster.local_master
------------
Succeeded: 1
Failed:    0
------------
Total states run:     1
Total run time:  63.401 ms
root@saltmaster:/home/vagrant#

Here, according to the Current Version, the runner function was renamed to state.orchestrate. This will be helpful to avoid confusion with the state.sls execution function, but the previous versions of state.sls must be used.

Execute Function

To execute a function, you should use the salt.function. Consider a file data.sls located at /srv/salt/orch/data.sls. Now, add the following changes in that file.

data.sls

cmd.run:
   salt.function:
      - tgt: ''*''
      - arg:
         - rm -rf /tmp/data

The following command is used to execute the Salt function.

root@saltmaster:/home/vagrant# salt-run state.orchestrate orch.data

It will produce the following output −

saltmaster.local_master:
----------
   ID: cmd.run
   Function: salt.function
   Result: True
   Comment: Function ran successfully. Function cmd.run ran on minion1, minion2.
   Started: 12:14:54.791635
   Duration: 234.615 ms
   Changes:
      minion1:

      minion2:
Summary for saltmaster.local_master
------------
Succeeded: 1 (changed = 1)
Failed:    0
------------
Total states run:     1
Total run time: 234.615 ms