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 It is best suited for an on-premise cloud solution where customer can shift their entire production environment. Also, the customer has a preference for a Homogenous Infrastructure Environment where budget is not a challenge. It is not at all suited for a Heterogenous Environment, e.g., a Public cloud where integration becomes a huge issue, also in SMB sections where budget is challenging.
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 Cloud enabled Solution. Support Container based Apps. Cost efficient. Supports both Public and Private Environments. 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 Deployment is complex. Recommended Number of Physical Nodes is three or more; with less than 3 Nodes, it becomes difficult to install V-SAN. Need for better integration. If we go on the public cloud, it is a huge challenge while integrate with an open source platform. Cost can be marginally reduced. SMB segments still prefer a separate license instead of VCF, or they postpone their purchase plans. 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 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 Although the public Cloud Model follows Opex Costing Model, it actually leads to very high costs also, the infra model in my organization is not suited for a Public Cloud Model. Hence We decided on an On-Premise Model, and the best suited was VMware Cloud Foundation, which is a complete Software-Defined Scale-Out Architecture. I also prefer a Homogenous environment; i.e, support and services from a Single OEM, so that I Can get faster resolutions to my tickets raised.
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 My organization has a size of 1300+ employees, using multiple applications and an exchange mail server that is hosted on On-Premise Cloud, hence scalability has not been a challenge. Having hosted my Production environment and Mail exchange Server on VCF, there has been optimum resource utilization with very little scope downtime. Hence have been able to save a lot of funds on Hardware resources. Due to the size of my organization and due the data load, I have been able to save on Resource Utilization and Organization Funds Read full review ScreenShots