Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review In our specific use case, SUSE Manager is extremely useful. We're having a large landscape that is divided into intake, development, quality and production with a couple of different SUSE flavours that need to be automatically rolled out, configured, patched and maintained, everything from up to date repositories that are cloned on a daily basis straight from SUSE.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Manages patch levels for most Linux OS by: date, group, cloud or custom channels Uses a lite version of Salt to run commands or scripts on any numbers of servers at once. Allows the joining of groups inside SUSE Manager to quickly access or work with servers so grouped. Read full review Cons 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 Read full review The cloning of patches when using the content lifecycle module in a multi-environment landscape with many SLES flavours is a bit cumbersome. More premade saltstate for default applications are always nice to have. Upgrading SUMA could be easier, especially when a Postgres upgrade is also required. Read full review Likelihood to Renew I am expanding the use of SUSE Manager throughout our organization and can't imagine going back to the "wild wild west" we had before.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review SUSE Manager provided a top-tier support person on site to us for two days to help integration. We did all the standard stuff they help with before he arrived. We were able to use him to get all the tricky stuff identified and solved in the short time we had. Had they sent us a lower-tier guy, it would have been a waste. I was impressed they sent such knowledgeable person.
Arthur Hamm Senior Systems Administrator / Analyst Infrastructure III
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review The other competitors also have a good platform and service, but we went with SUSE due to cost. The price was best and we needed to keep under a certain budget. The functionality was perfect for what we needed so we took the step forward. This allows us to manage our Linux environment within the manager and update or deploy specific tasks to each as needed.
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review Manages patch levels for most Linux OS by: date, group, cloud or custom channels Make it easy to audit our own infrastructure. Allows the joining of groups inside SUSE Manager to quickly access or work with servers so grouped. 24/7 support team. Automatic deployment. Read full review ScreenShots