# VM Profiles

Salt cloud designates virtual machines inside the profile configuration file. The profile configuration file defaults to `/etc/salt/cloud.profiles` and is a yaml configuration. The syntax for declaring profiles is simple:

    fedora_rackspace:
        provider: my-rackspace-config
        image: Fedora 17
        size: 256 server
        script: bootstrap-salt

It should be noted that the `script` option defaults to `bootstrap-salt`, and does not normally need to be specified. Further examples in this document will not show the `script` option.

A few key pieces of information need to be declared and can change based on the cloud provider. A number of additional parameters can also be inserted:

    centos_rackspace:
      provider: my-rackspace-config
      image: CentOS 6.2
      size: 1024 server
      minion:
        master: salt.example.com
        append_domain: webs.example.com
        grains:
          role: webserver

The image must be selected from available images. Similarly, sizes must be selected from the list of sizes. To get a list of available images and sizes use the following command:

    salt-cloud --list-images openstack
    salt-cloud --list-sizes openstack

Some parameters can be specified in the main Salt cloud configuration file and then are applied to all cloud profiles. For instance if only a single cloud provider is being used then the provider option can be declared in the Salt cloud configuration file.

## Multiple Configuration Files

In addition to `/etc/salt/cloud.profiles`, profiles can also be specified in any file matching `cloud.profiles.d/*conf` which is a sub-directory relative to the profiles configuration file(with the above configuration file as an example, `/etc/salt/cloud.profiles.d/*.conf`). This allows for more extensible configuration, and plays nicely with various configuration management tools as well as version control systems.

## Larger Example

    rhel_ec2:
      provider: my-ec2-config
      image: ami-e565ba8c
      size: t1.micro
      minion:
        cheese: edam

    ubuntu_ec2:
      provider: my-ec2-config
      image: ami-7e2da54e
      size: t1.micro
      minion:
        cheese: edam

    ubuntu_rackspace:
      provider: my-rackspace-config
      image: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
      size: 256 server
      minion:
        cheese: edam

    fedora_rackspace:
      provider: my-rackspace-config
      image: Fedora 17
      size: 256 server
      minion:
        cheese: edam

    cent_linode:
      provider: my-linode-config
      image: CentOS 6.2 64bit
      size: Linode 512

    cent_gogrid:
      provider: my-gogrid-config
      image: 12834
      size: 512MB

    cent_joyent:
      provider: my-joyent-config
      image: centos-7
      size: g4-highram-16G