Salt is definitely more complex than Ansible. Ansible wins the simplicity battle by a mile - for small or low-maintenance setups, I'd go with Ansible. Salt is w

Salt is definitely more complex than Ansible. Ansible wins the simplicity battle by a mile - for small or low-maintenance setups, I'd go with Ansible. Salt is way less complex than Puppet or Chef, though. However, once you have a decent number of things to manage, Salt becomes worth the initial setup cost, IMO. The hardest part about it is just learning the concepts - the difference between "states", "grains", and "pillars" is unintuitive, for example (states are what describe your system, grains are k:v data that lives on the minion, pillar data is k:v data that lives on the master), and it's not initially clear how states differ from modules (modules are "functions" that run, states wrap modules in a declarative syntax). Once it clicks, though, you have a seriously powerful tool at your disposal.