Salt
Salt is software that is used for automating IT. The software began development in 2012. According to the software website, Salt is used today by tens of thousands of enterprise IT organizations and DevOps. The software is designed to be used for application and data center infrastructure management and automation, specifically the most complex and massive technology projects, like cloud control and event orchestration. However, the software is also frequently used in smaller projects, like remote execution and configuration automation. The company behind Salt, SaltStack, is headquartered in Lehi, Utah. They have won multiple awards for their work, including 5 out of 5 stars in a recent InfoWorld review; Best of VMWorld 2014 in virtualization management; Infoworld 2014 Technology of the Year Award; 2013 GigaOm Structure Lanchpad competition winner; and named a Gartnet 2013 Cool Vendor in DevOps. Notable users of Salt include SAIC, RackSpace, PhotoBucket, Princess Cruises, Sky, Orange, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's JPL, MuleSoft, Mint.com, LinkedIn, Hulu, HP Cloud Services, Harvard University, the United States Department of Defense, Comcast, Columbia University, CloudFlare, Clemson University, Cars.com, AtTask, Affirm, Zillow and Spot.
- Control and automatic IT projects of any size
- The source code for Salt Open can be accessed on GitHub
- An extensive documentation database is available on the Salt
- The software is free and open source, but a paid Enterprise version is available for those with special needs (a free trial of that version is available as well, but it requires registration on the Salt website to access)
- Very active, ongoing development ensures that the software remains compatible with the latest technologies
- Despite the fact that the software is open source and free, downloading it from the website or even accessing the software repository requires registration, which seems a bit against the whole open source philosophy
- Only supports Linux-based operating systems: CentOS, Debian, RHEL, SUSE and Ubuntu
Large scale internet projects often involve a lot of servers, a load of wires and a great deal of headaches. At least the last problem can be solved with a little Salt. This longstanding, open source project is designed to automate some of the more tedious tasks associated with running a large scale IT operation. Salt is built on a dynamic communication bus, setting it apart from similar software. It can remotely execute commands across hundreds or even thousands of simultaneously running systems in mere seconds. Because of it's event-driven nature, it can be programmed to automatically react to certain situations to keep the running environment smooth and hang-up free. Configuration is simultaneous across systems and deploys instantly.