==============================
Salt Cloud 0.8.0 Release Notes
==============================

Salt Cloud has reached another milestone, with the 0.8.0 release. This
release includes many improvements to usability, error handling and general
stability of the product.

Documentation
=============

The documentation for Salt Cloud can be found on Read the Docs:
http://salt-cloud.readthedocs.org

Download
========

Salt Cloud can be downloaded and install via pypi or github:

https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/s/salt-cloud/salt-cloud-0.8.0.tar.gz

https://cloud.github.com/downloads/saltstack/salt-cloud/salt-cloud-0.8.0.tar.gz

Some packages have been made available for salt-cloud and more on on their
way. Packages for Arch, and FreeBSD are being made available thanks to the
work of Christer Edwards, and packages for RHEL and Fedora are being created
by Clint Savage. Package availability will be announced on the salt mailing list.

Increased Formatting Options
============================

Additional options have been added to salt-cloud -Q, to support the same kinds
of formatting already available in Salt:

.. code-block:: bash

  --raw-out
  --text-out
  --yaml-out
  --json-out
  --no-color

More Helpful Error Messages
===========================

As an ongoing effort, we have been cleaning up and adding error messages in an
attempt to make salt-cloud more helpful when something goes wrong. This
includes displaying messages as they are received from libcloud.

Specify Grains in Map Files
===========================

Previously, map files only had the ability to specify a profile name, and the
node names that would be associated with it. Now you can also specify grains
that will be laid down in each individual node:

.. code-block:: yaml

  vm_profile:
    - mynodename:
      minion:
        master: salt-master
      grains:
        fromage: tasty

These grains can also be specified in the profile itself. When this happens,
the grains in map files will override grains in the profile. For example:

.. code-block:: yaml

  vm_profile:
    provider: gogrid
    size: 512MB
    image: CentOS 6.2 (64-bit) w/ None
    os: RHEL6
    minion:
      master: salt.mycompany.com
    grains:
      french: fries

In this example, mynodename will include grains for both fromage and french,
but the master will be salt-master, not salt-mycompany.com.

AWS Improvements
================

AWS is much more complex to work with than any of the other supported cloud
providers. As such, additional configuration has been added in order to
accommodate their usage:

AWS.ssh_username:
  Because AWS images can include a variety of different usernames for the
  initial login, this option allows you to specify which one(s) to use to
  install salt upon firstboot.

AWS.ssh_interface:
  AWS instances include both private and public IP addresses. By default,
  salt-cloud will use the public IP to login. In situations where the
  salt-master is also located within AWS, the private IP can be used instead.

AWS.location and AWS.availability_zone:
  These options allow you to specify from within salt-cloud, which AWS
  locations your machines spin up in.

Ubuntu Fixes
============

Ubuntu packages automatically start the service upon installation, and needed
to be handled differently in the deploy script. Configuration is now laid down
before the package is installed, so that the minion can make its initial start
happen with the correct configuration.