02. About SaltStack

About SaltStack

SaltStack is the company.
Salt Open is the open source tool I am using in this repo.
SaltStack Enterprise is the software they sell and support.

Salt is a remote execution tool and configuration management system:

• remote execution: run commands on various machines in parallel with a flexible targeting system (salt execution modules)
• configuration management: establishes a client-server model to bring infrastructure components in line with a given policy (salt state modules in sls files)

Salt has good junos automation capabilities.

Salt is an event driven infrastructure tool (like StackStorm).

Salt is open source (https://github.com/saltstack), written in Python.

https://saltstack.com/

SaltStack competition

Salt competes primarily with Puppet, Chef, Ansible, and StackStorm.
Ansible vs Saltstack vs Stackstorm: https://medium.com/@anthonypjshaw/ansible-v-s-salt-saltstack-v-s-stackstorm-3d8f57149368

SaltStack architecture:

• salt master.
• salt minions (agents)
• salt proxies (enables master to control devices without minion). Examples include:
  • devices that could run a minion, but for whatver reasons, don't.
  • devices that cannot run a standard salt-minion:
    • proprietary OS
    • IoT
    • devices with limited CPU or memory

SaltStack versions:

Nitrogen has a better network automation support than Carbon.
https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/releases/version_numbers.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chemical_elements