Writing Cloud Provider Modules

Salt Cloud runs on a module system similar to the main Salt project. The modules inside saltcloud exist in the saltcloud/clouds directory of the salt-cloud source.

Adding a provider requires that a cloud module is created. The cloud module needs to only impliment a single function create, which will accept a single virtual machine data structure. Whatever functions need to be called to execute the create function can and should be included in the provider module.

A good example to follow for writing a cloud provider module is the module provided for Linode:

https://github.com/saltstack/salt-cloud/blob/master/saltcloud/clouds/linode.py

If possible it is prefered that libcloud is used to connect to public cloud systems, but if libcloud support is not available or another system makes more sense then by all means, use the other system to connect to the cloud provider.

An example of a non-libcloud provider is the ec2 module:

https://github.com/saltstack/salt-cloud/blob/develop/saltcloud/clouds/ec2.py