Target minions by multiple grains with Salt

With Salt there is a whole host of ways to target minions. In most cases I prefer to target minions based on certain grains.

$ salt -G 'role:webserver' test.ping

However, this allows you to only target minions by a single grain. In order to target minions based on multiple grains you use compound matchers.

$ salt -C 'G@role:webserver and G@role:worker' test.ping

See the salt docs for more information about compound matchers.

You may combine these compound expressions to define node groups in the configuration of the salt-master. This configuration is a YAML file which is by default located at /etc/salt/master, on the salt-master obviously.

An node group definition in the master configuration would look like the following for example:

nodegroups:
  django: "G@role:webserver and G@role:worker"

By defining this django node group you can target all the matching minions with the following command:

$ salt -N django test.ping