E. Automating Networks Using Salt, Without Running Proxy Minions<\/b> [20 min] \r\nMircea Ulinic, DigitalOcean\r\n<\/p>\r\n Salt is an agent-based open source software used to automate the management and configuration of infrastructure and application at scale. It typically requires a Salt Minion service to be running on the node managed with Salt. While this is not a blocker on any server, generally speaking, in the networking world, it is not possible to install custom software on the network gear you want to manage. This is why a few years ago, SaltStack, the company maintaining Salt, introduced the Proxy Minion, which is a derivative of the regular Minion, but it doesn\u2019t need to be installed on the targeted device. This means it can run anywhere. Similar to the regular Minion, you need to manage as many Proxy Minion services as network devices you have. This comes with a considerable cost - as in managing the infrastructure, operations, training of the users, etc. - is not always justified. For example, there are many cases in the networking world, where we need to interact with the device, only once or twice a year, however, those interactions must be consistent and safe. Consequently, automation is the only way to go but keeping a service up and running during this time is not an ideal solution.<\/p>\r\n<\/td> |