Skip to main content

How do I interact with Trident?

Trident is architected for seamless integration into larger solutions. Its primary responsibility is single-host servicing, while orchestration logic—such as scheduling and input selection—is delegated to external systems. This approach ensures that product-specific orchestrators, which possess deeper insight into deployment requirements and timing across a fleet, can efficiently manage operations. Trident simplifies deployment by leveraging a declarative Host Configuration, enabling consistent and reliable servicing without imposing unnecessary complexity.

Trident provides a robust command-line interface (CLI) for managing OS installation and servicing operations. The CLI supports the following commands:

  • install: Initiates the initial installation of the operating system.
  • offline-initialize: Prepares the Trident datastore for a VM image, enabling future in-place servicing. This is typically performed during VM image creation.
  • update: Executes an OS update in accordance with the supplied Host Configuration.
  • commit: Certifies the current OS deployment as successful.
  • rebuild-raid: Reconstructs a degraded software RAID array following physical drive replacement.
  • get: Retrieves the most recent Host Configuration, Host Status, or error details. This is particularly useful for non-interactive scenarios.
  • validate: Validates that a provided Host Configuration is syntactically correct and self consistent. Can be run on any system including a development machine, and thus does not consider the current system state.
  • diagnose: Generates a diagnostics bundle containing system information, logs, and configuration data for troubleshooting and support purposes.

Please consult CLI reference for detailed information on each command and its usage.

Trident is designed for both interactive use by administrators and non-interactive integration with orchestration systems. In automated environments, orchestrators can utilize the get command to monitor operation status and determine appropriate next steps based on structured feedback from Trident.

gRPC API​

In addition to the CLI, Trident exposes a gRPC server for programmatic interaction. The server runs as a daemon (tridentd) and listens on a Unix domain socket, allowing orchestration systems and agents to interact with Trident using a structured, strongly-typed API with streaming progress updates. This is the recommended integration path for complex orchestrators that need real-time observability and structured error reporting without parsing CLI output.

Logging​

Trident logs its operations to standard output, which can be redirected to a file or monitored in real-time. The logging verbosity can be adjusted using the --verbosity flag, allowing users to tailor the level of detail to their needs. Trident also creates a detailed log file at /var/log/trident-full.log for post-operation review and troubleshooting.