Windows:
VMware Tools Salt Minion feature is installed by default and can be modified in custom installation.
For VMware Tools to create a salt-minion instance on a particular VM and connect the salt-minion with the salt-master, host admin must configure and set the guest variable for that VM.
In vSphere host UI, select a particular VM, right click and edit settings. In the VM Options tab, select
Advanced
Edit Configuration
Add/Delete parameter
and set
guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.desiredstate
to present
guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.args
to
<custom arguments to VMware Tools salt-minion setup script>
For example:
guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.desiredstate
→ present
guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.args
→ master=1.2.3.4
Linux:
Host admin must install open-vm-tools and open-vm-tools-salt-minion and then set the guest variable for a particular VM as:
guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.desiredstate
to present
guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.args
to
<custom arguments to VMware Tools salt-minion setup script>
For example:
guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.desiredstate
→ present
guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.args
→ master=1.2.3.4 id=12345
Removing salt-minion
In Windows or Linux, if the host admin sets the guest variable
guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.desiredstate
to absent, then VMware Tools removes the salt-minion instance in the guest VM.
For example:
guestinfo./vmware.components.salt_minion.desiredstate
→ absent
Checking the latest status of salt-minion inside the guest
To check the latest status of the salt-minion inside the guest in the vSphere UI, use the guest variable:
guestinfo.vmware.components.salt_minion.laststatus

[salt_minion]
master=1.2.3.4
conf_file=/etc/salt/minion
id=dev_minion

Configuring the interval to monitor state change in the guest variables:
VMware Tools periodically polls guest variables for the state changes. Default poll-inteval is 180s and can be configured in the
tools.conf
settings.
[componentmgr]
poll-interval=180
(Default value: 180s)
Enabling and disabling component (salt_minion):
Guest admin can enable salt_minion by configuring the
tools.conf
settings.
[componentmgr]
included=salt_minion
Guest admin can enable all the components by configuring the
tools.conf
settings.
[componentmgr]
included=all
(Default configuration)
Guest admin can disable all components by configuring the
tools.conf
settings.
[componentmgr]
included=none

Linux environment
On Linux systems, the install script
svtminion.sh
is a bash script with the following pre-requisites:
- systemctl
- curl
- sha512sum
- vmtoolsd
- grep
- awk
- sed
- cut
- wget
svtminion.sh --help
shows the command line options.
Usage:
./svtminion.sh [-c|--clear] [-d|--depend] [-h|--help] [-i|--install] 
 [-j|--source] [-l|--loglevel] [-m|--minionversion]
[-r|--remove] [-s|--status] [-v|--version]
where
./svtminion.sh [-j|--source]
, specifies the location to install Salt Minion from. The default is
repo.saltproject.io
location.
For example: URL location
http://my_web_server.com/my_salt_onedir
https://my_web_server.com/my_salt_onedir
file:////my_path/my_salt_onedir
//my_path/my_salt_onedir
If specific version of Salt Minion is specified, [-m|--minionversion], then its appended to source. The default is latest.
Here is an example of the installing
salt_minion
as defined in
tools.conf
:
[salt_minion]
master=1.2.3.4
conf_file=/etc/salt/minion
id=dev_minion
source=https://my_web_server.com/my_salt_onedir
If installing from your private replica of the standard repository location for salt, use
source=https://repo.saltproject.io/salt/vmware-tools-onedir/
Windows environment
On Windows systems, the install script
svtminion.ps1
is a powershell script. The only prerequisite for Windows is the 'vmtoolsd.exe' binary, which is used to query the guest variables data.
To get help for this script, run the command
svtminion.ps1 -h
or
Get-Help svtminion.ps1
.
VMware Tools script for managing the Salt minion on a Windows guest is:
.\svtminion.ps1 [-Install] [-MinionVersion <String>] [-Source <String>] [[-ConfigOptions] <String[]>] [-LogLevel <String>] [-Help] [-Version] [<CommonParameters>]
where
-Source <String>
is the URL or path to the repo containing the installers.
This would contain a directory structure similar to that found at the default location: https://repo.saltproject.io/salt/vmware-tools-onedir/. This can handle most common protocols like http, https, ftp, unc, local
For example:
PS>svtminion.ps1 -Install
        PS>svtminion.ps1 -Install -MinionVersion 3004-1 master=192.168.10.10 id=dev_box
        PS>svtminion.ps1 -Install -Source https://my.domain.com/vmtools/salt
To see the examples, type
get-help .\svtminion.ps1 -examples
For more information, type
get-help .\svtminion.ps1 -detailed
For technical information, type
get-help .\svtminion.ps1 -full