4 ms·

Former SaltStack user here. If you're using it, just stop. Switch to Ansible, a Kubernetes/Helm/Flux solution or experiment with Chef Habitat if you're feeling

by tormeh 6y ago

Former SaltStack user here. If you're using it, just stop. Switch to Ansible, a Kubernetes/Helm/Flux solution or experiment with Chef Habitat if you're feeling futuristic. SaltStack is just bad. It's buggy, clunky and has really bad error messages. Its only saving grace is that it came before Ansible, but that's only relevant in a historical context. Just no.

lykr0n 6y ago
None of those are compatible solutions. Ansible is very inflexible when it comes to configuration and how you structure your playbooks. Kubernetes/Helm/Flux only works if you're inside k8s. I don't know why you would be using Salt for that. Chef Habitat looks nice, but again. I'm doing more then just management of applications. The only real alternative to Salt is Puppet. So, No. Just no.
NikolaeVarius 6y ago
Packer with Salt Masterless has been fine though.
dijit 6y ago
SaltStack is definitely the underdog when comparing puppet/chef or ansible. But I can chime in on why we use it: 1) First class windows support. (or, as first class as it comes) with no need to enable winrm (which, is much more difficult to do than just installing a salt-minion on first boot) 2) It scales really well; I can run hundreds of thousands of commands in parallel, ansible can't do that; it gets very starved on CPU. 3) It's push based (unlike chef, which you have to run on the client node itself, causing people to cron-job it. 4) it's easily extended; you can write custom modules and it's very easy and pleasant. --- Now, saying all of that, Salt has warts. Like, hundreds, maybe thousands. It's not uncommon that I find something that's just broken or bugged. Often upgrading fixes 1 bug but makes 3 more. I feel like this might be caused by being an underdog. But it's a real drawback that makes me cautious when recommending it.

4 ms·

Former SaltStack user here. If you're using it, just stop. Switch to Ansible, a Kubernetes/Helm/Flux solution or experiment with Chef Habitat if you're feeling

by tormeh 6y ago

lykr0n 6y ago
None of those are compatible solutions. Ansible is very inflexible when it comes to configuration and how you structure your playbooks. Kubernetes/Helm/Flux only works if you're inside k8s. I don't know why you would be using Salt for that. Chef Habitat looks nice, but again. I'm doing more then just management of applications. The only real alternative to Salt is Puppet. So, No. Just no.
NikolaeVarius 6y ago
Packer with Salt Masterless has been fine though.
dijit 6y ago
SaltStack is definitely the underdog when comparing puppet/chef or ansible. But I can chime in on why we use it: 1) First class windows support. (or, as first class as it comes) with no need to enable winrm (which, is much more difficult to do than just installing a salt-minion on first boot) 2) It scales really well; I can run hundreds of thousands of commands in parallel, ansible can't do that; it gets very starved on CPU. 3) It's push based (unlike chef, which you have to run on the client node itself, causing people to cron-job it. 4) it's easily extended; you can write custom modules and it's very easy and pleasant. --- Now, saying all of that, Salt has warts. Like, hundreds, maybe thousands. It's not uncommon that I find something that's just broken or bugged. Often upgrading fixes 1 bug but makes 3 more. I feel like this might be caused by being an underdog. But it's a real drawback that makes me cautious when recommending it.