If you remember, our basic remote execution command looks like this:

# sudo salt '*' test.ping
myminion:
    True

The basic Salt remote execution command is made up of five distinct pieces. We can easily see them if we look at the usage text for the salt command, which is as follows:

# sudo salt --help
Usage: salt [options] '<target>' <function> [arguments]

...

Let's inspect a command that uses all of these pieces:

# sudo salt --verbose '*' test.sleep 2
Executing job with jid 20140906205638826307
-------------------------------------------

myminion:
    True

Here's a list of the pieces of a Salt command, including the relevant pieces of the last command that we ran:

Let's briefly explore the purpose that each of these pieces serves.