A minion ID is a unique name given to each minion that is managed by a Salt master. By default, the minion identifies itself to the Salt master by the system’s Hostname. However, you can assign custom IDs that are descriptive of their function or location within your network.

If you decide to customize your minion IDs, try to keep the ID brief but descriptive of its role. For example, you could use apache-server-1 to name one of your web servers or you could use datacenter-3-rack-2 after its location in a datacenter. The goal is to make the names descriptive and helpful for future reference.

To declare a minion ID:

1. In the minion’s terminal, navigate to the directory that contains the minion’s minion.conf file. By default, the directory location is etc/salt/minion.d.

2. Open the minion.conf file in an editor. Change the id setting to your preferred minion ID. For example:

   id: postgres-database-1
   

3. After changing a minion ID, the minion’s keys must be accepted (or re-accepted) by the Salt master. For specific instructions on setting up the keys, see Accept the minion keys on the master(s).