salt-master requirements for 1200 minions minimal.

[Niels Abspoel]

Hi everybody,

I would like to know how beefy should I make a salt-master that will serve about 1200 minions.

It will be an mixed system: 

1/3 are weblogic application servers where salt will provide the configs.

1/3 are database system with a how lot of customized scripts 

1/3 are mailservers with custom postfix/scripting.

My thoughts are minimal 8 cores 8gb memory and storage space 100gb in /srv/

[Sean Channel]

Yes, you can do 1200 or 12,000 and more.

_S.

[Pete Emerson]

I haven't scaled salt up to this magnitude, yet, but I think the answer is "maybe".

I suspect that it depends *how* salt and the salt master are being used. If you're using static YAML for your state files and doing nothing "weird", then you might be fine with one master (I have no benchmarks for or against this argument). If you're doing more funky stuff like using a pyDSL renderer for your state files that then hits disk a lot or runs hefty queries on a local database, or a lot of CPU intensive pillars (I'm basically making this up, but you get the point), maybe not. 

I would also suggest that you may want more masters not for scaling purposes but for redundancy purposes. If you've got launching of a new master down to an artform and can essentially "push a button" to launch a new one, you may decide that it's worth the downtime.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Salt-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to salt-users+...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

[Joseph Hall]

8 gb and 8 cores should be more than plenty for only 1200 minions. 4
gb and 1 core would probably be enough.

--
"In order to create, you have to have the willingness, the desire to
be challenged, to be learning." -- Ferran Adria (speaking at Harvard,
2011)

[Sean Channel]

1200 is nothing to Salt, don't be fooled. If your salt-master is a
64-bit OS you can run 50,000 minions without any modifications Salt is
not loaded by the number of minions so much as what you do with it, and
Pete makes some good points in general for your deployment in that regard.

The limit on a 32-bit system I think might be between 2048-4096 given
the number of file descriptors those systems allow. 64-bit systems can
have more many more. Even hundreds-of-thousands is not too many.

_S

[Niels Abspoel]

Thanks for all the suggestions/feedback.

I will start with a 64bit OS and 8 core 8gb system and monitor the load when adding minions and sls files.

If needed I can always add another master.

At first the machine will be used to push scripts and commands, maybe later use states to manage the services.

Time to get my work environment automated..:)

[Avi Marcus]

Also, if you batch, to only execute on X minions at a time, it should help keep the load down (if that's ever an issue).

http://docs.saltstack.org/en/latest/topics/targeting/batch.html

-Avi Marcus

--

[Niels Abspoel]

Good Idea Avi Marcus, that would help, on monday infrastructure meeting @work to discuss automation future. 
Most likely all alternatives puppet/chef/ansible/salt will be reviewed, this information is very helpfull.

My goal in the meeting will be salt automation across our total infrastructure.

2013/3/16 Avi Marcus <a...@avimarcus.net>

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Salt-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/salt-users/TJPKxRv7qAo/unsubscribe?hl=en-US.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to salt-users+...@googlegroups.com.