SaltConf16: SaltStack Unveils Enterprise 5.0
SaltConf16 was a haven for the Salt community, perfect for the prospective user and the experienced. Regardless of a person’s background in Salt, the opening keynote addresses made everyone feel like a part of the community. The keynote address opened up with speaker Marc Chenn (@marcchenn), CEO of SaltStack, who discussed the future of automation and the release of SaltStack Enterprise 5.0 (get excited for a new UI and enterprise API!).
Up next, Simon Kofkin-Hansen (@simonkh) and Michael Elder (@mdelder) of IBM discussed how to ensure consistency in the development and management of enterprise-level automation.
This session took users through best practices for enterprise control and re-use of developed automation for much faster adoption of the software-defined data center (SDDC) and how automation can be leveraged to migrate workloads between VMware and IBM Cloud. You can see the keynote here.
What is Salt?
Salt is short for SaltStack, which is a free, simple, versatile and powerful configuration management system. This is the perfect tool for managing servers, allowing a user to add new components to a stack easily.
You can remotely dictate what a server needs to do or query your entire fleet of servers for information you need, all able to be run concurrently. Want to add a new server to fleet? Salt will allow you to add that server and decide what it should store and the actions it should perform. Adding the enthusiastic community with the overwhelming number of companies that use it, it’s easy to see the strengths and popularity of Saltstack.
The Salt Community and Sessions
There were sessions for everyone from beginners to Salt experts. The breakout sessions demonstrated real world applications and provided deep dives into implementation and execution strategies. Some of the sessions I found valuable were:
I’m not a SaltStack user so attending the Getting Started seminar was a great way to get re-acclimated with the fundamentals. Nicole Thomas and Mark Hooper reviewed basic functionality and discussed use cases that illustrated the core SaltStack components. If you use Salt Pillar and the Salt Mine then this seminar was for you. Saltstack’s guides are helpful for those who missed this class: https://docs.saltstack.com/en/getstarted/
- SaltStack for Developers
Showing the Value of SaltStack to more teams than devops and the like, C.R. Oldham and Adi Kulkarni explained how developers can implement the Salt API to call a multitude of important information to help in dev projects. The Salt API came with examples on how this can be used, as well as a demo to really help bridge the gap. Unsurprisingly, SaltStack has this covered too: https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/development/hacking.html
- Automating DevOps with SaltStack and Jenkins
A very useful class for all the system engineers and devops out there, speakers Pedro Algarvio and Adrian Malaguti gave insight on how Jenkins can work with Saltstack, how SaltStack itself uses it, and how great automation techniques help out. Considering Salt is very useful to devops and system engineers, classes of this nature could be considered high on a lot of attendees’ lists. Installation and examples on how this could be used: https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/development/tests/
- Introduction to SaltStack Enterprise 5.0
I’m not allowed to get into this because SaltStack hasn’t gone public with their product’s details, but I just wanted to point out that they did go over how this will make managing infrastructure even easier with SaltStack Enterprise 5.0. They had demonstrated how it’ll look and work, all behind closed doors.
Sunset in the Salty Mountains
Not only was SaltConf16 worthwhile, the individuals I met were stars on their own. People from all levels in their own companies came and met each other as equals. Knowledge was freely shared. This alone was worth the visit. Not only could a person learn new things, they could also find validation through others’ successes for things they believed worked well but just couldn’t find the words to explain.
It really was an experience I have found myself recommending to everyone since I’ve returned. It was the perfect mix of education and fun.
