Salt Minion deployment fails with error "Profile [profile_name] is not defined" in Aria Automation

Products

• VCF Automation

Issue/Introduction

When deploying a VM using an Aria Automation blueprint with SaltStack integration, the VM builds successfully, but the Salt Minion installation fails.

The Aria Automation UI displays an error similar to:
Resource [/resources/compute/ID]:: SaltStack resource with job id [ID] failed. Error:: [Date] Minion deployment failed. | Minion deployment and/or state file run failed.

In the Salt Config Activity tab or Salt Master logs, the following traceback appears:

Exception occurred in runner deploy.minion: Traceback (most recent call last):
...
File "/opt/saltstack/salt/extras-3.10/sseape/runners/deploy.py", line 738, in minion
raise salt.exceptions.SaltException(
salt.exceptions.SaltException: Error in installing salt minion - {'Error': 'Profile ssc_EXAMPLE_profile is not defined'}

Environment

• Aria Automation 8.x
• VCF Salt (Aria Automation Config)

Cause

The issue is caused by a static MinionID entry being defined within the Salt provider configuration file (e.g., saltify_provider.conf). When a static ID is present, the Salt runner is unable to dynamically assign a unique minion ID based on the newly provisioned VM's hostname, leading to the "Profile not defined" exception.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, remove the static Minion ID from the provider configuration to allow for dynamic ID assignment.

1. Access Salt Master: SSH into the Salt Master node.
2. Navigate to Configuration: Go to the cloud providers directory: cd /etc/salt/cloud.providers.d/
3. Edit Provider Config: Open the relevant provider configuration file (e.g., sec_saltify_provider.conf) using a text editor like vi or nano.
4. Remove Static ID: Locate the line containing MinionID: [Value] and delete it.
5. Save and Exit: Save the changes to the file.
6. Retry Deployment: Attempt to deploy the blueprint again from Aria Automation. The system should now successfully generate the minion ID dynamically using the VM hostname.

Workaround: Ensure that the profiles defined in /etc/salt/cloud.profiles.d/ do not have conflicting hardcoded identifiers that would override the dynamic parameters passed by Aria Automation during the deployment task.