A Passionate Techie

First install and configure vault using this tutorial: https://apassionatechie.wordpress.com/2017/03/05/hashicorp-vault/ Use the latest version of vault. Then install salt using the steps given here: https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/installation/ If you face any issues then refer these links: https://apassionatechie.wordpress.com/2017/07/31/salt-issues/ https://apassionatechie.wordpress.com/2017/08/03/salt-stack-formulas/ Now let's integrate vault and salt so that we can access vault secrets from inside salt state. First let's add some key values into our vault. vault write secret/ssh/user1 password="abc123" Then you can check it by reading: vault read secret/ssh/user1 To allow salt to access your secrets you must firstly create a policy as follows: salt-policy.hcl [code] path "secret/*" { capabilities = ["read", "list"] } path "auth/*" { capabilities = ["read", "list","sudo",...

Chef is a powerful automation platform that transforms infrastructure into code. Whether you’re operating in the cloud, on-premises, or in a hybrid environment, Chef automates how infrastructure is configured, deployed, and managed across your network, no matter its size. This diagram shows how you develop, test, and deploy your Chef code. The workstation is the location from which users interact with Chef. On the workstation users author and test  cookbooks  using tools such as  Test Kitchen  and interact with the Chef server using the  knife  and  chef command line tools. Nodes are the machines—physical, virtual, cloud, and so on—that are under management by Chef. The chef-client is installed on each node and is what  performs the automation on that machine . Use the Chef server as your foundation to create and manage flexible, dynamic infrastructure whether you manage 50 or 500,000 nodes, across multiple datacenters, public and private clouds, and in heterogeneous environments...

What is Vault? Vault is a tool for securely accessing  secrets . A secret is anything that you want to tightly control access to, such as API keys, passwords, certificates, and more. Vault provides a unified interface to any secret, while providing tight access control and recording a detailed audit log. A modern system requires access to a multitude of secrets: database credentials, API keys for external services, credentials for service-oriented architecture communication, etc. Understanding who is accessing what secrets is already very difficult and platform-specific. Adding on key rolling, secure storage, and detailed audit logs is almost impossible without a custom solution. This is where Vault steps in. The key features of Vault are: 1) Secure Secret Storage 2)  Dynamic Secrets 3)  Data Encryption 4)  Leasing and Renewal 5)  Revocation   Terms used in Vault   Storage Backend  - A storage backend is responsible for durable storage of  encrypted  data. Backends are not trusted by...