VMware Salt vs. SysKit Trace

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Salt
Score 6.2 out of 10
N/A
VMware Salt is an Infrastructure Automation & Configuration Management platform that provisions, configures, deploys, and manages infrastructure components at scale. The solution utilizes an event-driven automation engine to enforce compliant software states across virtual machines, servers, containers, and network devices. The VMware Salt solution is comprised of software components from both VMware and the open-source Salt Project While the Salt Masters and Salt Minions are a part of the open…N/A
SysKit Trace
Score 0.0 out of 10
N/A
SysKit Trace is a centralized solution for documenting Office 365 settings and tracking settings changes, from SysKit in Zagreb.N/A
Pricing
VMware SaltSysKit Trace
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SaltSysKit Trace
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
Community Pulse
VMware SaltSysKit Trace
Considered Both Products
Salt
Chose Salt
Puppet was working fine for our needs. We decided to make the switch after our operating system vendor decided to stop official support for SaltStack.
Chose Salt
SaltStack is a newer product, so it learned some of the mistakes that Puppet made. It truly is a system that can respond to events as well as configure systems.
Chose Salt
SaltStack beats all of the tools above since it is a "6-in-one" solution: Config Management, Orchestration, Automation, parallel sys administration, remote execution and cloud management.

The other solutions only solve one or two problems.
Chose Salt
I've used shell scripts over ssh, custom in-house deployment tools, Chef, and SaltStack. I've evaluated Ansible, but I was never happy with performance over SSH. Chef's loose configuration data model and lack of philosophy and conventions around use makes it difficult for a …
Chose Salt
Chef and Puppet both require writing code, which I view as excessively involved for the task at hand. I have only needed to write pure python for a handful of Saltstack use cases - everything else has been configuration files.

Ansible, while elegant and simple, simply does not …
Chose Salt
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.
Chose Salt
Ansible and Salt have emerged around the same time, and are pretty close.

Ansible pros:
Chose Salt
I looked at Chef and Ansible but it was a long time ago and I don't remember the pros and cons compared to SaltStack.
When I arrived at my company, Saltstack was already used in production so there has been no discussion about other deployment and automation solutions
Chose Salt
  • Puppet - ugly and heavy, ruby-based, although has the best set of production-ready modules and can be a good choice for big enterprise.
  • Chef - outdated, ruby-based.
  • Ansible - slow due to ssh transport, but is the best alternative for SaltStack.
SysKit Trace

No answer on this topic

Best Alternatives
VMware SaltSysKit Trace
Small Businesses
IBM Terraform
IBM Terraform
Score 8.8 out of 10
IBM Terraform
IBM Terraform
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.1 out of 10
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.1 out of 10
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
VMware SaltSysKit Trace
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
VMware SaltSysKit Trace
Likelihood to Recommend
Managing heterogeneous environments of large numbers of nodes, especially nodes which may need sudden changes (security updates, for instance), or frequent replacement, is a strength for Saltstack. Simplicity is not a strength for Saltstack. In a homogenous environment (all CentOS 7, for example, with no Debian or Windows) I might recommend using Ansible instead - it is less flexible and granular, but simpler to configure.
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Pros
  • A superb remote execution framework! SaltStack allows us to easily program numerous functions on top of it. For example, we developed a fast parallel asynchronous deployment tool that handles all software deployment, including interdependent service management.
  • Configuration management is now easy. We take advantage of this to automate (in tandem with AWS tools) the stand-up of all servers and services. It is also relatively easy to create new configuration management states for software not yet supported by the community (e.g. Grafana).
  • Flexibility. Numerous small utilities have been built which simply wrap around SaltStack to allow tedious tasks to become easy.
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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
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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.
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Alternatives Considered
I've used shell scripts over ssh, custom in-house deployment tools, Chef, and SaltStack. I've evaluated Ansible, but I was never happy with performance over SSH. Chef's loose configuration data model and lack of philosophy and conventions around use makes it difficult for a team to share responsibility for configuration code. Needing to use additional tools to do orchestration for cross-host/agent dependency relationships made me look for more. SaltStack, while not as mature when I first tried it, impressed me with its speed and elegant design
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Return on Investment
  • SaltStack has reduced the time it takes to deploy new machines for us 10-fold.
  • It is much easier for us to maintain compliance with industry standards with SaltStack.
  • No negative impacts!
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ScreenShots