Applying salt state to new deployment from Aria Automation failed, error "Rendering SLS 'sse:apache.init' failed Jinja variable 'apache' is undefined; ..."

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

• the automated deployment of a new VM failed while applying the configured state file, in this case the default state for Apache
• the SaltStack configuration defined in the Aria Automation template is set to to configure the a grain for os_family, e.g:

  Cloud_SaltStack_1:
      type: Cloud.SaltStack
      properties:
        ...
        stateFiles:
          - apache
        additionalMinionParams:
          grains:
            os_family:
              - Red Hat

Environment

Aria Automation 8.18.x

Aria Automation Config / Tanzu Salt / VMware Salt

Cause

The default state apache/init.sls does expect a string return for grain os_family and does not handle a string list.

Resolution

Remove the additional grain configuration, as the os_family grain is a default grain.