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.
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Tanium
Score 8.2 out of 10
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Tanium, headquartered in Emeryville, provides two solution packages: Unified Endpoint Management and Unified Endpoint Security. The vendor states this approach reduces complexity, improves efficiency and closes the gaps between operations and security. Tanium can also be delivered as a service from the vendor.
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.
Tanium is well suited for organizations where enterprise infrastructure has great significance and needs to be properly managed as well as protected. Most organizations depend upon their infrastructure to sustain so Tanium can be a boon for them to sustain in this competitive market. However, Tanium is less appropriate for the traditional offices that don't have or have a less online presence.
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.
One issue is its ring topology, as the data is stored in central hubs and pushed through its peer nodes. If the central hub fails, then the associated node will also result in failure.
Another problem is that all Tanium management is on premises requiring the customer to maintain it. If we want ask any help from Tanium support we always get a response like "you are maintaining it yourselves and it's your responsibility.
The Tanium User Interface could be improved a bit as, although the tool is rich in performance, a more impressive UI might really attract new customers.
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.
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.
Tanium is always my first choice, so much excellent feedback online from genuine users, easy to use in any system environment, and value for money, so many good things about Tanium stacks up against all the other competitors in the market. Tanium is one of the most reliable and trusted risk and compliance management software.
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.
