State

The State command allows you to ensure your environment is configured how you specify. You specify your configuration in an SLS file, also known as a state file.

Decribe Example

First let’s describe our VPCs. Your AWS account will have a default VPC as well as any others you have already created.

idem describe aws.ec2.vpc

Output:

vpc-07fc9362:
  aws.ec2.vpc.present:
  - name: vpc-07fc9362
  - resource_id: vpc-07fc9362
  - instance_tenancy: default
  - cidr_block_association_set:
    - AssociationId: vpc-cidr-assoc-b2ca3fdb
      CidrBlock: 172.31.0.0/16
      CidrBlockState:
        State: associated
  - enable_dns_hostnames: false
  - enable_dns_support: true

Use Idem State

You’ll notice that enable_dns_hostnames is set to false. If I want to change that value to true I can take the above output from the Describe example and create a file with .sls extension and use that to update the running configuration.

Copy the above text output to ~/my_vpc.sls, change enable_dns_hostnames to true and then run the following command:

idem state ~/my_vpc.sls

Output:

--------
      ID: vpc-07fa0462
Function: aws.ec2.vpc.present
  Result: True
 Comment: ()
 Changes:
old:
    ----------
    enable_dns_hostnames:
        False
new:
    ----------
    enable_dns_hostnames:
        True

Here you’ll notice that the old field shows us the previous value for enable_dns_hostnames and the new field shows us the new value.