Installation guide

This configuration has been tested on:

• Ubuntu 20.04

• Salt 3005.1

The guide assumes that Salt Master is already installed, and that you use Grafana Cloud (as opposed to on-prem Grafana installation).

The project ships with reference Salt states to help you set up the necessary components. Feel free to tweak them as you want.

Copy the reference Salt states

1. Copy the contents of the states folder into your Salt master’s state tree (/srv/salt/states/). Later we will define some pillars as well.

2. Copy the vector.toml to /srv/salt/states/vector/.

Install PostgreSQL and configure it as a job cache

The Postgres server can be installed on the same machine with Salt master, or on a separate one.

You need two Postgres users: salt for Salt master with read/write permissions, and saltro for Grafana Cloud with read-only permissions.

You need to open the 5432 port to the internet, while restricting incoming connections to only allow Grafana Cloud IP addresses. This guide doesn’t cover a firewall setup. To get an up-to-date IP list you can query these APIs:

• https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/reference/allow-list/

• https://grafana.com/api/hosted-grafana/source-ips.txt

It is highly recommended to also enable TLS for PostgreSQL connections: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/ssl-tcp.html

WARNING: please use complex passwords for all Postgres users and ensure the server has up-to-date security patches. Even with the above access list, there is still the risk of a malicious Grafana Cloud user trying to guess the passwords and establish an inbound connection. If you prefer not to open Postgres to the internet, you can develop a simple authenticated REST API to look up the necessary data in the PG job cache and expose this API to Grafana Cloud instead of the raw database.

Automated install

1. Install PostgreSQL

salt POSTGRES_MINION state.apply postgresql.server

2. Generate PG password hashes

Run the following commands on any Linux machine with Python 3 (replace SALTPASSWORD and SALTROPASSWORD with different strong passwords):

python3 -c "import hashlib; print('md5' + hashlib.md5(b'SALTPASSWORD' + b'salt').hexdigest());"
python3 -c "import hashlib; print('md5' + hashlib.md5(b'SALTROPASSWORD' + b'saltro').hexdigest());"

Put the hashed passwords into pillar under the corresponding keys:

• postgres_salt_md5password

• postgres_saltro_md5password

Put the salt user password in plaintext under the following pillar key:

• postgres_salt_password

3. Create the database and users

Now create the salt database, the database users, and the necessary tables:

salt POSTGRES_MINION state.apply postgresql.db

The reference SQL script is located at https://gitlab.com/turtletraction-oss/salt-grafana/-/blob/main/states/postgresql/files/create_tables.sql

4. Set up PostgreSQL as a job cache for the Salt Master

Add the following pillar key (optional, uses 127.0.0.1 by default):

• postgres_host

Then enable the cache and restart the master:

salt MASTER_MINION state.apply postgresql.cache

If your PG server supports TLS (the lab one doesn’t), add the following lines to postgres-cache.conf:

returner.pgjsonb.sslmode: None
returner.pgjsonb.sslcert: None
returner.pgjsonb.sslkey: None
returner.pgjsonb.sslrootcert: None
returner.pgjsonb.sslcrl: None

Instead of None please define the values as described here https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/libpq-connect.html#LIBPQ-PARAMKEYWORDS

5. Check the cache

Check whether the master uses the job cache by running any job and then querying the jids SQL table.

Manual install

1. Connect to the PG server and run the sql script (tweak it to adjust the user names):

psql "sslmode=require host=postgresql.example.com user=XXX password=XXX dbname=XXX"
\i states/postgresql/files/create_tables.sql

2. Set up PostgreSQL as a job cache for the Salt master

1. Install Psycopg2 via apt install python3-psycopg2 or salt-pip install psycopg2 for Salt onedir

2. Copy states/postgresql/files/postgres-cache.conf to your Salt Master /etc/salt/master.d/ directory

3. Replace returner.pgjsonb.host value with the PG server address

4. Replace returner.pgjsonb.user with the user name

5. Replace returner.pgjsonb.pass with the plain-text password

6. Replace returner.pgjsonb.db with the database name

7. Uncomment the returner.pgjsonb.sslmode: require line

8. Restart the Salt master and check whether it uses the job cache by running any job and then quering the jids SQL table

Configure Grafana Cloud

To use the default dashboards shipped with Salt Grafana, you need to configure the following items in Grafana:

• Loki data source

• Prometheus data source

• Tempo data source

• PostgreSQL data source

• Grafana plugins

• Dashboards

• Server-side Grafana Cloud settings

1. Loki data source

1. Go to https://grafana.com

2. Click the right stack

3. Click the Details section for Loki

4. Note the URL, User, and Password settings to use them later for Vector install

2. Prometheus data source

1. Go to https://grafana.com

2. Click the right stack

3. Click the Details section for Prometheus

4. Note the Remote Write Endpoint, Username / Instance ID, and Password / API Key settings to use them later for Vector install

3. Tempo data source

1. Go to https://grafana.com

2. Click the right stack

3. Click the Details section for Tempo

4. Locate the “Sending Data to Tempo” section

5. Note the endpoint, username, and password settings to use them later for Tempo Relay install

4. Add PG data source to Grafana Cloud

Refer to https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/datasources/postgres/ for instructions and make sure to specify the saltro user credentials for better security:

• Host: X.X.X.X:5432

• Database: salt

• User: saltro

• Password: SALTROPASSWORD plain text password you defined earlier

• TLS/SSL Mode: depends on your PG server settings

5. Install Grafana plugins

• https://grafana.com/grafana/plugins/pgillich-tree-panel/

• https://grafana.com/grafana/plugins/gapit-htmlgraphics-panel/

6. Import the default dashboards

The dashboards can be found at https://gitlab.com/turtletraction-oss/salt-grafana/-/tree/main/dashboards/default

7. Server-side Grafana Cloud settings

Derived traceID field:

• Go to https://grafana.com

• Click the right stack

• Launch Grafana

• Go to Configuration -> Data sources

• Choose the Loki data source and scroll down to the Derived Field section

• Fill in the form as displayed below and make sure to test the regex by pasting a test log line (click on Show example log message):

• Create a support ticket with this content:

  What happened?

  The default derived field for traceID does not work

  What was expected to happen?

  Log to trace button should be visible in each log line that has the traceID field

  How to fix that?

  Modify the default regex

  traceID=(\w+)
  

  with new regex:

  "traceID":\s*"(\w+)"
  

• Once a Grafana support person completes the ticket, make sure to check it by clicking Explore, selecting the Loki-datasource and adding a query to see all logs. Then when you click on a log line, you should see a button next to the traceID field.

• For more details, visit https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/datasources/loki/configure-loki-data-source/#derived-fields

Trace to metrics:

• Go to https://grafana.com

• Click the right stack

• Launch Grafana

• Go on Configuration -> Data sources

• Choose Tempo datasources and scroll down

• If the Trace to metrics section is not visible, you need to send a ticket to Grafana support to enable it

• To work correctly, Trace to metrics needs the metrics generator, to enable it send a ticket to Grafana support

• Now you have to decide which tags you will use, and define a query, and ask support to configure them

• Then you can check the Explore panel to see if the metrics work as expected

• For more details, visit https://grafana.com/blog/2022/08/18/new-in-grafana-9.1-trace-to-metrics-allows-users-to-navigate-from-a-trace-span-to-a-selected-data-source/

Install the Vector engine

Automated install

Define the following pillar keys (noted in the Grafana Cloud section):

• vector_listen_source (127.0.0.1:9000 by default)

• vector_loki_sink (like https://loki.example.com)

• vector_loki_user

• vector_loki_pass

• vector_prom_sink (like https://prom.example.com/api/prom/push)

• vector_prom_user

• vector_prom_pass

• vector_http_sink (http://127.0.0.1:8000/endpoint by default, see the Tempo Relay section)

Install the Vector agent (on the same machine as the Salt master or on a separate one):

salt VECTOR_MINION state.apply vector.agent

Define the following pillar key:

• vector_agent_endpoint (127.0.0.1:9000 by default)

Install the Vector engine on the Salt master and restart the master:

salt MASTER_MINION state.apply vector.engine

Manual install

First, install Vector on the same (or separate) server as the Salt Master: https://vector.dev/docs/setup/installation/

The engine requires the following source to be configured in Vector (see the full configuration):

[sources.salt_socket]
type = "socket"
address = "127.0.0.1:9000"  # change to 0.0.0.0:9000 if the server is separate from Salt
mode = "tcp"
max_length = 102400  # tweak to fit the largest event payload
decoding.codec = "json"

Second, install the engine on the Salt Master:

For onedir Salt package:

salt-pip install saltext.vector

For classic Salt package:

pip install saltext.vector

Third, place a snippet like this into /etc/salt/master.d/engines.conf and restart the master:

engines:
  - vector:
      # host_id: myid  # master or minion id override, optional
      address: "127.0.0.1:9000"  # vector socket endpoing
      # include_tags:
      #   - "*"
      exclude_tags:
        - salt/auth
        - minion_start
        - minion/refresh/*
        - "[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]"

Install the Tempo Relay service

Define the following pillar keys (noted in the Grafana Cloud section):

• grafana_tempo_endpoint (like example.com:443)

• grafana_tempo_user

• grafana_tempo_pass

Install the Grafana agent (on the same machine as the Salt master or on a separate one):

salt GRAFANA_MINION state.apply grafana.agent

Define the following pillar keys:

• tempo_relay_user (root by default, but it is strongly recommended to use an unprivileged Linux user)

• tempo_relay_endpoint (http://localhost:4317 by default, should point to your Grafana agent IP address)

• tempo_relay_socket (127.0.0.1:8000 by default, this is where Vector will send the Salt events)

Install the Tempo Relay service (on the same machine as the Salt master or on a separate one):

salt GRAFANA_MINION state.apply tempo.relay