SaltStack & VMware!

So, the news broke a little while ago that VMware has announced its intention to acquire SaltStack.

But what is SaltStack and what do they do?

Salt was an open source automation engine and originated from the need for high-speed data collection and task execution for data center systems administrators managing massive infrastructure scale and resulting complexity.  Originally known simply as Salt, the author, Thomas S. Hatch, found previous open source solutions to be lacking in their functionality and capabilities.  ZeroMQ messaging library was used to facilitate the high-speed requirements needed and built Salt using ZeroMQ for all networking layers.

Since those earlier days, Salt has developed into more than those original requirements and become known as SaltStack.  With the Salt Cloud function, it allowed for provisioning of any hybrid cloud host, then exposes Salt remote execution, configuration management, and event-driven automation capabilities to the newly provisioned hybrid cloud systems.  25 public and private cloud systems including AWS, Azure, VMware, IBM Cloud and OpenStack are supported.

As SaltStack say themselves, they are unique in providing intelligent, event-driven automation for efficient control of complex business systems at any scale.  They can help to orchestrate and automate difficult IT tasks with speed and flexibility to ultimately deliver continuous security compliance, vulnerability remediation, and real IT security.

It’s easy to see why SaltStack should join the VMware family, especially around the multi-cloud and security areas that are some of the main focuses within VMware at the moment.  It’s still early days in the acquisition and it will be interesting to see how SaltStack develops within VMware and how it’s technology will be adapted and integrated into the VMware portfolio.