SaltStack Pillar data fails to render intermittently during Aria Automation deployments

Products

• VCF Automation
• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)
• SaltStack entitlement to VMware
• VMware Salt
• VMware Tanzu Platform Services - SALT

Issue/Introduction

• Intermittent Deployment Failures: Salt states fail during initial Aria Automation deployments due to SaltStack state execution error.
• Empty Pillar Data: The pillar.get function returns empty values even when the pillar is correctly defined and targeted in the SaltStack Config (RaaS) UI Pillar data failing to render in salt state periodically.
• Command Execution Errors: Automated tasks (such as realm join) fail with "missing argument" or syntax errors because the Jinja variables associated with pillars are rendered as blank strings Pillar data failing to render in salt state periodically.
• Empty pillar.items Output: Running salt <minion> pillar.items immediately after deployment returns an empty dictionary
• Manual Refresh Fix: Executing saltutil.refresh_pillar on the minion manually after the failed deployment correctly populates the data, allowing subsequent state applications to succeed
• Caching/Jinja Race Condition: Adding a saltutil.refresh_pillar state within the same cloud template does not resolve the issue, as Jinja rendering typically occurs at the start of the process before the refresh state executes Pillar data failing to render in salt state periodically.

Environment

Aria Automation 8.16.x+

Aria Automation Config 8.17+

SaltProject 3006.0 - 3006.21

Cause

This is a known defect in the product affecting the ability to render Pillar data when rendering a SLS file in SaltProject. See this guide for more general information on Pillar data, https://docs.saltproject.io/salt/user-guide/en/latest/topics/pillar.html. 

Resolution

The resolution to this issue will be to upgrade to the latest version of VMware Salt and to ensure that you are on the latest (3006.23+ at the time of this writing) version of SaltProject. 

Additional Information

See this article for some guidelines for upgrading your SaltStack infrastructure, Upgrade Salt from Salt