Introduction to Endpoint Management With Salt

Salt is an endpoint management solution that the Physics and Astronomy Tech Office uses to manage our Linux systems. It's primarily used to manage astronomy lab computers as they require Ubuntu for their applications. Salt works on a master-minion model with a central management server (called the master) and the local management software installed on the computers (the minions). Once the master and minion have exchanged a set of keys, an encrypted connection is used to send commands and software to individual minions and groups of minions.

As of the writing of this article, all Salt resources are located at git.physics.byu.edu under the config-management repository. You must request access from someone in the office who has at least "maintainer" access rights. Currently, the only Linux distribution supported is Ubuntu; however, many campus resources exist for RHEL, and in the future could be implemented into our workflow. However, no such demand exists within the department.