salt/doc/topics/releases/0.6.0.rst

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Salt 0.6.0 release notes
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The Salt remote execution manager has reached initial functionality! Salt is a
management application which can be used to execute commands on remote sets of
servers.

The whole idea behind Salt is to create a system where a group of servers can
be remotely controlled from a single master, not only can commands be executed
on remote systems, but salt can also be used to gather information about your
server environment.

Unlike similar systems, like Func and MCollective, Salt is extremely simple to
setup and use, the entire application is contained in a single package, and the
master and minion daemons require no running dependencies in the way that Func
requires Certmaster and MCollective requires activeMQ.

Salt also manages authentication and encryption. Rather than using SSL for
encryption, salt manages encryption on a payload level, so the data sent across
the network is encrypted with fast AES encryption, and authentication uses RSA
keys. This means that Salt is fast, secure, and very efficient.

Messaging in Salt is executed with ZeroMQ, so the message passing interface is
built into salt and does not require an external ZeroMQ server. This also adds
speed to Salt since there is no additional bloat on the networking layer, and
ZeroMQ has already proven itself as a very fast networking system.

The remote execution in Salt is "Lazy Execution", in that once the command is
sent the requesting network connection is closed. This makes it easier to
detach the execution from the calling process on the master, it also means that
replies are cached, so that information gathered from historic commands can be
queried in the future.

Salt also allows users to make execution modules in Python. Writers of these
modules should also be pleased to know that they have access to the impressive
information gathered from PuppetLabs' Facter application, making Salt module
more flexible. In the future I hope to also allow Salt to group servers based
on Facter information as well.

All in all Salt is fast, efficient, and clean, can be used from a simple command
line client or through an API, uses message queue technology to make network
execution extremely fast, and encryption is handled in a very fast and
efficient manner. Salt is also VERY easy to use and VERY easy to extend.

You can find the source code for Salt on my GitHub page, I have also set up a
few wiki pages explaining how to use and set up Salt. If you are using Arch
Linux there is a package available in the Arch Linux AUR.

GitHub page: |saltrepo|

Wiki: https://github.com/saltstack/salt/wiki

Arch Linux Package: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/salt-git/

I am very open to contributions, for instance I need packages for more Linux
distributions as well as BSD packages and testers.

Give Salt a try, this is the initial release and is not a 1.0 quality release,
but it has been working well for me! I am eager to get your feedback!