Get started with Salt
Salt is an open source tool to manage your infrastructure. Easy enough to get
running in minutes and fast enough to manage tens of thousands of servers (and
still get a response back in seconds).
Execute arbitrary shell commands or choose from dozens of pre-built modules of
common (or complex) commands. Target individual servers or groups of servers
based on name, defined roles, or a variety of system information such as
hardware, software, operating system, current version, current environment, and
many more.
Bring your servers up to a known configured state by writing simple lists of
items and defining attributes on those lists—no need to learn yet another
language.
Read the Salt overview for a more thorough description.
Salt (Masterless) Quickstart
Install salt-minion and provision a webserver in 3 easy steps. The fastest way to start
using salt's configuration management.
Salt Quickstart
Salt in depth
Setting up and using Salt is a simple task but its capabilities run much, much
deeper. Gaining a better understanding of how Salt works will allow you to
truly make it work for you.
Targeting is specifying which minions should execute commands or manage server
configuration.
- Globbing and regex
- Match minions using globbing and regular expressions.
- Grains
- Match minions using bits of static information about the minion such as
OS, software versions, virtualization, CPU, memory, and much more.
- Node groups
- Statically define groups of minions.
- Compound matchers
- Combine the above matchers as a single target.
- Batching execution
- Loop through all matching minions so that only a subset are executing a
command at one time.
Remote execution is the core functionality of Salt. Running pre-defined or
arbitrary commands on remote hosts.
- Modules
Salt modules are the core of remote execution. They provide
functionality such as installing a package, restarting a service,
running a remote command, transferring a file — and the list goes on.
- Full list of modules
- The giant list of core modules that ship with Salt
(And there are even more in the salt-contrib repository!)
- Writing modules
- A guide on how to write Salt modules.
- Returners
Salt returners allow saving minion responses in various datastores or
to various locations in addition to display at the CLI.
- Full list of returners
- Store minion responses in Redis, Mongo, Cassandra or more.
- Writing returners
- If we're missing your favorite storage backend, webservice, or you
need a custom endpoint returners are tiny and simple to write.
Building on the remote execution core is a robust and flexible config
management framework. Execution happens on the minions allowing
effortless, simultaneous configuration of thousands of hosts.
- States
Express the state of a host using small, easy to read, easy to
understand configuration files. No programming required (unless you
want to).
- Full list of states
- Install packages, create users, transfer files, start services, and
much more.
- Using states
- You've seen the big list of available states, now learn how to call
them.
- Highstate data structure
- A dry vocabulary and technical representation of the configuration
format that states represent.
- Writing states
- A guide on how to write Salt states.
- Renderers
Write state configuration files in the language, templating engine, or
file type of your choice. The world doesn't need yet another DSL.
- Full list of renderers
- YAML? JSON? Jinja? Mako? Wempy? Python? We got you covered. (And if
we don't, new renderers are tiny and easy to write.)
- Renderers
- Salt states are only concerned with the ultimate highstate data
structure. How you create that data structure isn't our business.
Tweak a config option and use whatever you're most comfortable
with.
Salt is many splendid things.
- File Server
- Salt can easily and quickly transfer files (in fact, that's how Salt
States work). Even under load, files are chunked and served.
- Syndic
- A seamless master of masters. Scale Salt to thousands of hosts or
across many different networks.
- Peer communication
- Allow minions to communicate amongst themselves. For example, configure
one minion by querying live data from all the others. With great power
comes great responsibility.
- Running Salt without root
- The Salt daemons can be run as an unprivileged user.
- Firewall settings and Salt
- A tutorial covering how to properly firewall a Salt Master server.
- Cron and Salt States
- A tutorial covering how to properly use cron to schedule when a
minion updates its state.
- Network topology
- At it's core, Salt is a highly scalable communication layer built on
top of ZeroMQ that enables remote execution and configuration
management. The possibilities are endless and Salt's future looks
bright.
- Testing Salt
- A howto for writing unit tests and integration tests.
- Python API interface
- Use Salt programmatically from your own scripts and programs easily and
simply via import salt.
- Automatic Updates and Frozen Binary Deployments
- Use a frozen install to make deployments easier (Even on Windows!). Or
take advantage of automatic updates to keep your minions running your
latest builds.
- Windows Software Manager / Package Repository
- Looking for an easy way to manage software on all your Windows machines? Do
you feel left out of all the package manager magic found in yum and apt?
Search no more! Salt has an integrated software package manager for your
Windows machines! Install software hosted on your master, somewhere on your
network, or anywhere http, https, and ftp work.