Apache CloudStack vs. Salt Project

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
CloudStack
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
CloudStack is a cloud management platform, from Apache.N/A
Salt
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Built on Python, Salt is an event-driven automation tool and framework to deploy, configure, and manage complex IT systems. Salt is used to automate common infrastructure administration tasks and ensure that all the components of infrastructure are operating in a consistent desired state.N/A
Pricing
Apache CloudStackSalt Project
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CloudStackSalt
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Best Alternatives
Apache CloudStackSalt Project
Small Businesses
VMware Cloud Director
VMware Cloud Director
Score 9.8 out of 10
HashiCorp Vagrant
HashiCorp Vagrant
Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Rubrik
Rubrik
Score 8.8 out of 10
Ansible
Ansible
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
VMware Cloud Director
VMware Cloud Director
Score 9.8 out of 10
Ansible
Ansible
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache CloudStackSalt Project
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(3 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache CloudStackSalt Project
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache
Whether our clients are VPS hosting providers or operate private cloud infrastructure for their internal enterprise requirements, CloudStack provides solutions in an easy to implement and operate way that is simple to provide training for. The learning curve for our customesr adopting CloudStack for the management of their cloud infrastructure is shallow, enabling our clients to come up to speed quickly without having to outsource their administrative functions any longer than necessary
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Open Source
SaltStack is a very well architected toolset and framework for reliably managing distributed systems' complexity at varied scale. If the diversity of kind or number of assets is low, or the dependencies are bounded and simple, it might be overkill. Realization that you need SaltStack might come in the form of other tools, scripts, or jobs whose code has become difficult, unreliable, or unmaintainable. Rather than a native from-scratch SaltStack design, be aware that SaltStack can be added on to tools like Docker or Chef and optionally factor those tools out or other tools into the mix.
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Pros
Apache
  • Low-cost solution
  • Open-source
  • Engaged community
  • Solid documentation
  • Is a very reliable tool for orchestration with good usability
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Open Source
  • Targeting is easy and yet extremely granular - I can target machines by name, role, operating system, init system, distro, regex, or any combination of the above.
  • Abstraction of OS, package manager and package details is far advanced beyond any other CRM I have seen. The ability to set one configuration for a package across multiple distros, and have it apply correctly no matter the distrospecific naming convention or package installation procedure, is amazing.
  • Abstraction of environments is similarly valuable - I can set a firewall rule to allow ssh from "management", and have that be defined as a specific IP range per dev, test, and prod.
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Cons
Apache
  • Sometimes you can find undocumented bugs that can compromise the entire infrastructure.
  • [If] you don't have an official support channel, you have try to find out the source of the problem by yourself.
  • Volume size limitation. Other players allow you to create volumes up to 64TB while ACS allows only 2TB volumes
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Open Source
  • Managing network hardware should be more native and easy
  • SaltStack should buffer jobs and, when a client returns, make sure it is executed proberly
  • SaltStack should provide basic pillar and states structures to help get newbies started
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Support Rating
Apache
No answers on this topic
Open Source
We haven't had to spend a lot of time talking to support, and we've only had one issue, which, when dealing with other vendors is actually not that bad of an experience.
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Alternatives Considered
Apache
The University, my first large implementation, had a big issue with 149 small data centers spread on São Paulo State, this data centers costs to university were very high, the consolidation idea in two data centers were awesome, but were worried with the management, so we adopted ACS to management of all 576 physical hosts. Now a days the university is delivering IaaS for all staff, students, teachers and researchers, they are using these resources to delivery services to their clients and have a great results in research area
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Open Source
We moved to SaltStack from Puppet about 3 years ago. Puppet just has too much of a learning curve and we inherited it from an old IT regime. We wanted something we could start fresh with. Our team has never looked back. SaltStack is so much easier for us to use and maintain.
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Return on Investment
Apache
  • Low-cost solution (free and open-source)
  • More than 2000 users using it simultaneously
  • Stable and reliable
  • Up and running since 2012
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Open Source
  • We manage two complex highly available self-healing (all infrastructure and systems) environments using SaltStack. Only one person is needed to run SaltStack. That is a HUGE return on investment.
  • Building tooling on top of SaltStack has allowed us to share administrative abilities by role - e.g. employee X can deploy software Y. No need to call a sysadmin and etc.
  • Recovery from problems, or time to stand-up new systems is now counted in minutes (usually under eight) rather than hours. This is a strategic advantage for rolling out new services.
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