Skip to main content
TrustRadius
Salt

Salt

Overview

What is Salt?

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…

Read more
Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

SaltStack has proven to be an invaluable tool for managing complex IT infrastructures and automating critical infrastructure tasks. Users …
Continue reading
TrustRadius Insights
TrustRadius Insights
Read all reviews
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing
Salt

Salt

N/A
Unavailable

What is Salt?

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.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://github.com/saltstack/salt

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?

17 people also want pricing

Alternatives Pricing

Ansible

Ansible

$5,000
per year
What is Ansible?

The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (acquired by Red Hat in 2015) is a foundation for building and operating automation across an organization. The platform includes tools needed to implement enterprise-wide automation, and can automate resource provisioning, and IT environments and…

Return to navigation

Product Demos

SaltStack agentless management using salt-ssh

YouTube

SaltStack salt-ssh quickstart

YouTube
Return to navigation

Product Details

What is Salt?

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.

Salt is presented as ideal for configuration management because it is pluggable, customizable, and plays well with many existing technologies. Salt enables users to deploy and manage applications that use any tech stack running on nearly any operating system, including different types of network devices such as switches and routers from a variety of vendors.

Developed at SaltStack, which was acquired by VMware in late 2020, Salt is still available open source and community supported, while the former SaltStack Enterprise and SaltStack SecOps solutions became part of the VMware vRealize Automation solution as the SaltStack Config software configuration management add-on for that solution.

Salt Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD
Mobile ApplicationNo
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(34)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

SaltStack has proven to be an invaluable tool for managing complex IT infrastructures and automating critical infrastructure tasks. Users have reported using SaltStack to manage configurations on over 100 CentOS virtual machines, simplifying the setup process and efficiently configuring essential elements such as NTP, DNS, user accounts, and automounted NFS home drives. The ability to install base package sets for different machine types based on their respective groups has further streamlined the configuration process.

Additionally, SaltStack is being utilized in various environments, including integration lab environments for instructional workshops and cloud-based development projects. Its orchestration capabilities allow users to easily configure highly available architectures and automate server management tasks. Furthermore, SaltStack's extensive feature set in configuration management, orchestration, remote execution, and cloud management make it a preferred choice for managing large fleets of systems at scale.

Organizations across industries have found SaltStack to be an essential tool for their needs. Some companies have built custom deployment orchestrators on top of SaltStack to automate critical infrastructure across multiple VPCs in AWS, while others rely on it organization-wide for configuration management, continuous delivery, user management, package management, and data distribution. Overall, SaltStack's versatility and robust functionality make it an indispensable asset in managing complex IT environments efficiently and effectively.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-10 of 10)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
March 04, 2020

SaltStack doesn't make me feel Salty.

Verified User
General Manager in Information Technology
Entertainment Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Likelihood to Recommend
SaltStack is good if you want to be able to proactively respond to events, manage systems at scale, or to ensure compliance or search for vulnerabilities within your infrastructure. It allows you to control a wide range of systems, even beyond Linux hosts.
May 23, 2017

Spicing up Linux infrastructure management

Valentin Höbel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Valentin Höbel
Cloud Architect
open *i GmbH (Telecommunications, 51-200 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
SaltStack can be used to manage large server farms and for configuration management. SaltStack does very well with Linux and Unix systems and is also able to manage Windows servers and clients; however, managing Windows is not its biggest strength. SaltStack should not be introduced if the amount of servers to be managed is very small (e.g. less than 3-4).
May 01, 2017

Seasoned advice about SaltStack

Jeremy McMillan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Jeremy McMillan
Systems Administrator, Deployment Specialist Consultant
SAP Hybris (Computer Software, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
August 08, 2016

SaltStack is recommended!

WC
William Cannon
Infrastructure Architect
hospitalityPulse (Hospitality, 1-10 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Well Suited:
Configuration Management
Orchestration of Services/Applications in regard to each other or infrastructure
Custom tooling - wonderful event bus for asynchronous event driven actions
Instant remote access (command execution) to tens/hundreds/thousands of servers with very flexible targeting
Ability to put network nodes under configuration management even if they are unable to run a "minion" via proxy minions

Less appropriate use of SaltStack? If you have only one server and want to manage it very poorly resulting in difficult hours of trouble-shooting then don't use SaltStack.
August 05, 2016

Saltstack is complicated and beautiful - a rare combination

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Computer & Network Security Company, 201-500 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
August 05, 2016

SaltStack is AMAZING!!

Steven Marshall, RHCSA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Steven Marshall, RHCSA
Director of IT
Viaero Wireless (Wireless, 201-500 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
We use SaltStack all the time but it is really handy when a new zero-day exploit has gets announced and we need to check package versions across a bunch of machines. We can easily check vulnerabilities by issuing one command on the master server. It's just as easy to patch the machines once you have a maintenance window. One command and it's done.
August 01, 2016

Why would you pick Salt over Ansible

Verified User
Team Lead in Engineering
Retail Company, 11-50 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
If you need to frequently set up or update a large amount of server instances, Salt and Ansible are probably the two most popular options these days. The key difference is probably the master-minion model of Salt, where minions can pull the state from master, while Ansible emphasizes "push" model (there's Ansible-pull, but it seems to be an afterthought).

In practice, this means with Salt it's trivial to build an AMI which will pull state from master on startup and bring the new instance into service. You can use that instance with AutoScaling group, and voila — you have a scalable cluster on full auto.
Return to navigation