Awesome Salt Project

A collaborative curated list of awesome Salt Project resources, tutorials and other salted stuff.

Built on python, Salt uses simple and human-readable YAML combined with event-driven automation to deploy and configure complex IT systems. In addition to leveling-up Tanzu Salt, Salt can be found under the hood of products from Juniper, Cisco, Cloudflare, Nutanix, SUSE, and Tieto, to name a few.

SaltStack, the company, was acquired by VMware in 2020. VMware was later acquired by Broadcom in 2023. Salt Project remains an open source ecosystem that Broadcom supports and contributes to.

NOTE: A bookmark file is available with all of these links, ready for import into your web browser. Download the bookmarks/awesome-saltproject-bookmarks.html file from the root of this repo!

• Official Resources
  • Salt Project Package Repositories
• Related Documentation
• Tutorials
• Integrations
• Books
• Videos
• Tools
• Presentations
• Blogposts and opinions
• Discussions
• Community
• Formulas
• Extensions
• Cheat sheets
• Uncategorized
• Attic

• Salt Project site - Salt Project (Salt Open Source) website.
• salt GitHub repo - Salt's source code, issues discussion and collaboration.
• Salt Project User Guide - These tutorials walk you through the basics of getting Salt Project up and running.
• Salt Project Install Guide - These tutorials walk you through the basics of getting Salt Project up and running.
• Salt Project Reference Documentation Landing - Official home page of reference documentation.
• Salt Project Core Module Index (Refernce Documentation) - Official index of built-in Salt modules.

• Tanzu Salt - Tanzu Salt website for the Enterprise Salt solution (new name for commercial Salt Project / SaltStack product under VMware by Broadcom).

NOTE: Refer to the Salt Project Install Guide for information on how to install our packages from these repositories.

• Salt Project Repository: Linux (RPM) - Where Salt rpm packages are officially stored and distributed.
• Salt Project Repository: Linux (DEB) - Where Salt deb packages are officially stored and distributed.
• Salt Project Repository: GENERIC - Where Salt Windows, macOS, etc. (non-rpm, non-deb) packages are officially stored and distributed.

• Jinja2 documentation - This official documentation covers the used templating language in Salt.

• About SaltStack - Extensive blogpost with lots of in-depth information. 💎
• A dive into SaltStack - SaltStack uncovered - Configuration management has been a big leap forward for System Engineers.
• How To Use Salt Cloud Map Files to Deploy App Servers and an Nginx Reverse Proxy - Walkthrough on how to use Salt Cloud Map Files to deploy application servers and an Nginx reverse proxy.
• An Introduction to SaltStack Terminology and Concepts - Part 1 of 6 in the series Managing Development Environments with SaltStack.
• SaltStack Infrastructure: Installing the Salt Master - Part 2 of 6 in the series Managing Development Environments with SaltStack.
• SaltStack Infrastructure: Configuring Salt-Cloud to Spin Up DigitalOcean Resources - Part 3 of 6 in the series Managing Development Environments with SaltStack.
• SaltStack Infrastructure: Creating Salt States for Nginx Web Servers - Part 4 of 6 in the series Managing Development Environments with SaltStack.
• SaltStack Infrastructure: Creating Salt States for HAProxy Load Balancers - Part 5 of 6 in the series Managing Development Environments with SaltStack.
• SaltStack Infrastructure: Creating Salt States for MySQL Database Servers - Part 6 in the series Managing Development Environments with SaltStack.
• Getting Started with SaltStack - the Other Configuration Management System Built with Python - A Linux Journal "Getting started" from 2013.
• Create an army of Salt minions on DigitalOcean - Combine the simplicity of Salt with DigitalOcean's snapshot and image feature.
• Vagrant & SaltStack Quickstart Tutorial - Getting started with SaltStack and Vagrant.
• Salt-API, A Crash Course - Get a barebones salt-api proof of concept up and running.
• Revised Getting Started with SaltStack - Part 1 - Simple setup and play around on the command line.
• SaltStack Examples - Will teach you some of default functions in a quick way.
• Getting Started with Saltstack and salt-workspace - Learning SaltStack by setting up a salt-workspace.
• Getting started with Salt Structure - Learn how to setup a structured SaltStack workspace.
• Introduction to SaltStack - A two day course designed to quickly introduce System Administrators and Application Developers on how to start using Saltstack.
• The Simplest Way to Learn SaltStack - Start to learn the basics of SaltStack by setting it up in Docker.
• SaltStack - Quick Guide - Part of the larger "Learn SaltStack"-tutorial at Tutorials Point.
• Upgrading Salt to Python 3 - How to switch SaltStack from Python2 to Python3.
• Salt Guides and Tutorials, by Linode - A good collection of Salt guides and tutorials created and managed by Linode.

• Jenkins Salt API Plugin - This plugin sends a SaltStack API message as a build step.
• Rundeck - Generate Rundeck node resources from the Salt Mine.

• O'Reilly - Salt Essentials - By Craig Sebenik, Thomas Hatch.
• O'Reilly - Network Automation at Scale - By Mircea Ulinic and Seth House (an ebook sponsored by Cloudflare).
• Leanpub - SaltStack For DevOps - By Aymen El Amri.
• Leanpub - Getting Started with SaltStack - By Ben Hosmer.
• Packt - Learning SaltStack, 2nd ed. - By Colton Myers.
• Packt - Mastering SaltStack, 2nd ed. - By Joseph Hall.
• Packt - Extending SaltStack - By Joseph Hall.
• Packt - Salt Cookbook - By Anirban Saha.

• Salt Project YouTube - Salt Project's official YouTube channel.
• Managing Your Infrastructure with SaltStack - PyCon 2015 - April 11, 2015 - Colton Myers.
• Testing Salt States with Docker - SaltStack PDX - June 23, 2015 - Jason Denning.
• Beyond Configuration Management with SaltStack for Event-Driven Infrastructure - Southern California Linux Expo - January 23, 2016 - David Boucha.
• Automation and Orchestration with SaltStack and Twilio - Devops Chicago - March 2, 2016 - Nathan Brooks.
• SaltStack for FreeBSD - A 7-part video crash course on SaltStack for FreeBSD.
• SaltConf15 - YouTube - There were more than 60 talks delivered at SaltConf15 and we recorded all of them.
• SaltConf16 - YouTube - Video recordings of SaltConf16 presentations.
• SaltConf17 - YouTube - Video recordings of SaltConf17 presentations delivered by SaltStack customers and partners.
• SaltConf18 - YouTube - Video recordings of SaltConf18 presentations.
• SaltConf19 - YouTube - Video recordings of SaltConf19 presentations.
• SaltConf20 - YouTube - Video recordings of SaltConf20 presentations.
• SaltConf21 - YouTube - Video recordings of SaltConf21 presentations.

• SaltGUI - A web interface for managing SaltStack based infrastructure.
• Silica - A Flask-based lightweight Salt web console.
• Molten - Molten is a WebUI for the REST API exposed by Saltstack.
• salt-pepper - A CLI Frontend to the salt-api systems.
• salt-sproxy - Salt plugin to automate the management and configuration of devices and applications, without running (Proxy) Minions.
• salt-lint - Checks Salt state files (SLS) for practices and behavior that could potentially be improved.
• Alcali - A web based tool for monitoring and administrating Saltstack Salt.
• ISalt - IPython-based command shell for interactive Salt programming.
• salt-exporter - Salt Prometheus exporter working out of the box without any configuration on Salt side, comes with an event watcher TUI.

• Getting Started with SaltStack - By Peter Baumgartner.
• An introduction to infrastructure management with SaltStack - By Aurelien Geron.
• Saltpad: A SaltStack Web GUI - By Boris Feld.
• Intro to SaltStack - By Justin Carmony.
• salt-deconstructed - Video and presentation (slides & PDF) by Carson Anderson.

• One week of Salt: frustrations and reflections - First hand experiences from a Chef user.
• Getting started with SaltStack by example: Automatically Installing nginx - A good getting started guide for both Salt master and minions.
• SaltStack: Manage entries in unmanaged files with File Blockreplace - How to use the SaltStack's core file.blockreplace.
• SaltStack: Keeping Salt Pillar data encrypted using GPG - On secure encryption/decryption of pillar data.
• Using Salt like Ansible - How to use Salt in a way similar to Ansible.
• Using Salt with reclass - Use class inheritance to define nodes roles and avoid duplication.
• Text editor plugins for Salt states and YAML/Jinja - Covers plugins for different editors when writing Salt states.
• Writing a custom Salt Grain - Writing a custom Salt Grain, and why you might want to.
• Building Self-Healing Applications - Automate the detection and first action to correct errors in your infrastructure.
• Testing your salt states with kitchen-salt - Make it easy to test salt states or formulas independently of a production environment.
• Salt Sudo - Using Salt custom modules to manage sudo access for users.
• Complex User management with Saltstack (using Py! renderer) - Using a centralized User YAML file that contains all users' data.
• Vagrant Provisioning with SaltStack - Provisioning Virtual System using Masterless Salt Stack.
• Salt DevKit with External Formulas - Local Development with Vagrant using external Salt formulas.

• Prometheus - Auto-deploying Consul and Exporters using Saltstack - How to deploy SaltStack, Consul and the Prometheus Node Exporter on Linux. 💎
• Network Automation at Scale - Up and running in 60 minutes.
• SaltStack Overview - An excellent overview and introduction of Salt.
• Parsing Command Output in Saltstack with JC - How to easily parse remote command output in SaltStack, using jc.

• Reddit: Vagrat, SaltStack, Ansible, Docker, Chef, Puppet, Packer.. Something - Discussion on Reddit, started Sept. 2014 in /r/sysadmin.

• Salt Project Community Discord Server - Official Salt Project Community Discord Server (Replaces Official SaltStack Slack Community)

• SaltStack on Reddit - SaltStack subreddit.
• Twitter - Official Salt Project Twitter account.
• Facebook - Official Salt Project Facebook account.
• Instagram - Official Salt Project Instagram account.
• Mailing list: salt-users - Salt-users mailinglist on Google Groups.
• Mailing list: salt-announce - Salt-announce mailinglist on Google Groups.

• SaltStack Formulas - A central collection of formula repositories for SaltStack.
• Salt Formulas - A community developed SaltStack formulas ecosystem.
• Writing SaltStack formulas - An overview on writing SaltStack formulas.

• Salt Formulas In-depth blogpost about Salt Formulas. 💎

• Salt Extensions - A central collection of extension repositories for salt.

• SaltStack Cheat Sheet Plus - By Facu de la Cruz.
• Salt Commands cheat sheet - List of common Salt commands.
• SaltStack Wiki - Cheat sheet in the SaltStack GitHub Wiki.

• Salt (software) - Wikipedia (English).

• How To Install Salt on Ubuntu 12.04 - Part 1 of 2 in the series An Introduction to Salt.
• How To Create Your First Salt Formula - Part 2 in the series An Introduction to Salt.
• Automated Provisioning of DigitalOcean Cloud Servers with Salt Cloud on Ubuntu 12.04 - Walkthrough on automated provisioning of DigitalOcean Cloud Servers with Salt Cloud on Ubuntu 12.04.
• How To Install and Configure Salt Master and Minion Servers on Ubuntu 14.04 - SaltStack installation walkthrough for Ubuntu 14.04.
• Docker Swarm 1.12 Cluster Orchestration with SaltStack - Let's see how we can automate the spin-up of a cluster using SaltStack.