The automation functionality has been most valuable. With a click of a button, we are able to automate provisioning, the build of new hardware and apply patches. These are all extremely important and differentiated tasks that can be automated in SaltStack. 

The solution is very easy to code and to set up. It works on a YAML language which is very simple and does not require someone with programming experience to start using it. 

We monitor the configurations against CIS standards. We run CIS benchmarks and maintain configurations with higher CIS values for each server. 

The product’s most valuable feature is its ability to provide environmental security.

The most valuable feature is the ability to see both compliance and vulnerabilities in a dashboard view. Being able to see that data in one place is a real game-changer. This, along with the rich metadata from our systems allows us to be able to drill down to very specific facts about each and every system. With this level of insight, we are able to make changes both at scale as well as at an individual system or application level.

SaltStack SecOps has the ability to react to events and also allows us to start reacting automatically to issues that might be in that infrastructure.

The solution's most valuable feature is stability.

• Hybrid/multi-cloud infrastructure automation capability
• Configuration management
• Complex orchestrations
• Imperative programming style
• Declarative “states” DSL
• Simple YAML syntax
• Vitality of open source community involvement
• Infrastructure remote control: This fans out from a single command to many (from a handful to potentially thousands of) target machines or VMs. The fine-grained targeting features make it easy to do just what you want on just the infrastructure you want affected, with mechanical consistency. The complex orchestration capabilities allow smart conditional remote control operations on different targeted infrastructure, driven by either, or both, automatic reaction to events, or manual triggers or commands. These are the critical features needed to implement continuous delivery of anything anywhere.

Cross-platform Windows and Linux support: We run a Windows infrastructure within AWS with several key services deployed on Linux instances.

• Tool for Infrastructure as Code (IAC)
• Allows you to preserve the status of the target machine
• Allows you to version a target machine as a SaltStack recipe/status “code”
• Versions can be stored and replicated
• Offers immutability, versioning, and state reuse

States, pillars, and custom modules have all taken us a long way in achieving our goals. There is great depth to it and we're looking forward to exploring all of its features.

Remote code execution is the most valuable feature; also some of the configuration automation and the automated deployment possibilities it gives us.

• Bulk/Remote execution
• Event/Reactor system
• Configuration Management

These features serve as the most critical pieces for automating anything, not just state, but also execution and remediation.

I don’t want to build automation that just does a thing or two. I want to build automation that is intelligent, part of the fabric of our environment, and is somewhat self-sustaining. I think SaltStack can help me do this.

Configuration management: We were using SaltStack for orchestration in liaison with OpenStack. It was good for Linux machines, but the Windows experience was fragile.

• Configuration management
• Remote execution
• Grain & mine

I like knowing what state my machines are in, and I like being able to change their state all at once.

Remote execution in itself is a big time saver at any scale.

For example, a particular incident happened at one of my previous organizations. We had to do a PoC on a lot of servers, where traffic was to be generated from a few hundred machines (something like 'bees with machine guns') and would allow us to benchmark one of internal components.

So, before we began working on it, I suggest the use of SaltStack because of its remote execution. They could easily start generating traffic from a few or all these servers and then get a good feel of a Flash Sale in Ecommerce.

Eventually, one of my colleagues was assigned this task and he used SaltStack. He liked the way SaltStack (on the entire cluster) was up and running in a few minutes, and also gave him flexibility to generate traffic, make config changes, etc. on the fly.

The Salt Formulas are very, very helpful, as they help to get the configuration needed to install any new package and configuring the same; very, very simple and easy.

The initial learning curve is low. I had a working configuration building fairly complex proprietary Internet servers within a couple of months, well before the rest of our server team was ready for production builds.

The developers are very quick to respond to reported issues and offer advice to deal with them (or correct something you are not using well). The couple of times I had to deal with them were actually very pleasant.

The relationship between the state files and the actual filesystem being served by the master is as simple and elegant as the way *NIXes treat everything as a file.

The execution capability both in a shell on the Salt master and using cmd.script within state files allows even a novice to make things happen the way they want until they learn to use all of the available modules the right way. This, for me, was part of getting up and running fast. This reduced the learning curve for me tremendously, as I got my initial server build framework running. I have been able to continue refining the system in stages since then and it is easy because of the relationship between the state files and the files they serve.

The most valuable features are:

• Setting configurations options dynamically for servers
• Pulling information about all computers

• Remote execution.
• SaltStack being so fast makes it very convenient and practical; allows me to get information about my servers in no time.

The most valuable feature is Salt Cloud due to its ability to tie into VMware, as well as Salt Orchestration, because it allows us to script the process of setting up an entire infrastructure.

• Interoperability between operating systems with the ability to perform mass automation with triggering
• Integration with many vendors

These features are valuable because I need them to complete the work assigned to me.

The ability to programmatically describe the desired state of a single, or an entire fleet of servers, on-premises, and in a cloud environment.

Jinja/Python + wide range of embed functions for various platforms and purposes.

Jinja is based on Python, which is a fairly handy and comfortable programming language. They make it simple to create Python-based templates and, when necessary, create functions for actions that are not covered by the Jinja engine.

Agentless application deployment is the main reason for faster setup and easy deployments.

• Configuration file templating: limits the amount of copy/pasted configuration across services with minor differences
• Near instant orchestration: no waiting to see if a change worked
• Well-formatted and detailed command output and logs: make troubleshooting easy and break/fix recovery fast

Execution modules. It is designed for system administrators rather than for developers. It covers maximum functionality and makes automation easy.

• Distributed shell: Ability to execute remote commands on all targets at once.
• Package Helper: Upgrades all your machines with one command: The package method of SaltStack allows easy host updates. (See https://docs.saltstack.com/en/... .)

The two most valuable features to us are beacon related. We can use the beacons to alert that a service is stopped, and restart it almost instantly. Also, we can use the beacons to alert based on whatever monitoring metric we see fit. For example, if a server is running out of usable RAM, for example, we can alert on that, and react to it in whatever way we see fit. We could in fact automate any aspect of scaling – all because of SaltStack. Also, it enables you to have a remote CLI on every server in your infrastructure and issue a command to it. Within seconds, you will have the results of that command in an organized list.

• Reactors, because of the automation help they provide (reacting to custom events).
• State dependency trees, because a state can be linked to the status of another state, allowing you to particularize the behaviour of the software in some cases. The result of the execution of a system_state can be linked to different other states. For example, you can say: IF Upgrade_Apache is OK then Restart_Apache else Rollback_Upgrade. In that manner, you can create a sort of dependency among multiple desired states.

• Extensibility and flexibility
• Open source
• Active community

Also, the text-based configuration is very important to discern differences in version control. It also means it is easily configured with templates, and easily edited.

The most valuable asset is most probably the ability to target the needed hosts, and running commands via modules or a shell on all of them at the same time. This means that mass parallel administration of large server farms is possible.

The most valuable feature of the product is the automation for services; it’s the basis of my work. It is important because nowadays, in this complex world, services have become the base for everything. Having a large base is needed to better build what you need for your pipelines, as opposed to a few years ago, when the application was king.

• Simple and flexible YAML/JSON configuration management framework which allows simultaneous configuration of thousands of systems
• “Reactor" for event-driven infrastructure which must be present in any cloud based solutions and in CloudOps itself
• Powerful and flexible DevOps orchestration solution

• Minion-less deployment of SaltStack. Minion is the client-side tool for SaltStack.