Event-Driven Salt · AI Uplift · Government & Enterprise

Hard problems deserve simple solutions.

We do event-driven Salt our way — complexity is easy; simple is the craft. We build it, hand it back, and turn your team into AI geniuses on the way out.

Let's talk → Our approach ↓

Free · No sign-up · Honorary credential

Saltify Academy

Learn Salt the Saltify way.

Eight free guides. Zero sign-ups. From your first salt-call to the AI-augmented dev workflow — all in plain English. The course we wish we had.

8 Free guides
360 State modules mapped
30min To confident
0 Sign-ups
Start here →

The five-course path. Beginner → production.

  1. SALT 101 Install Guide Build VCF Salt the right way. 3 servers, 11 steps, blue/green ready. ~20 min read
  2. SALT 102 Getting Started Your first state files. Pillar. GPG. Push to Git. Hello-world to source-of-truth. ~15 min
  3. SALT 201 Salt States Six modules cover 90%. Requisites, top file, real production patterns. ~10 min
  4. SALT 301 Salt on Windows Production patterns, not theory. The 6 quirks. winrepo. Fleet-wide. ~12 min
  5. SALT 401 Salt + AI Use Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor with Salt. Pillar-aware prompts that actually work. ~10 min
Advanced

Tooling track — for the AI-augmented workflow.

  1. SALT 501 AI Tooling VSCode, SaltStack ext, Copilot Chat, Claude in Chrome, Claude Code (IDE + terminal). Install commands lifted from official docs. ~25 min
Always handy

Two reference companions.

SALT REF · 01

Salt Cheat Sheet

The 50 commands you'll actually use, on one scrollable page. No spec sheet, no docstrings.

Open the cheat sheet → SALT REF · 02

State Modules Index

Every state module — 360 of them — grouped by what they do, with usage examples.

Browse all 360 →

What is Salt?

Configuration management on the surface. Event-driven everywhere underneath.

Configuration management

Declare your fleet's desired state in YAML. Salt enforces it across thousands of nodes — Linux, Windows, anywhere there's a minion. One source of truth, one apply, every host converges.

saltproject.io ↗

Event-driven by design

Every minion publishes to a real-time event bus. Reactors fire orchestration on those events — no polling, no cron, no five-minute lag. This is what people miss about Salt: it's reactive infrastructure, not just config push.

Event bus docs ↗

Free or enterprise

Salt Project is open source, free, fully featured. VMware Aria Automation Config (formerly SaltStack Config) wraps it with RBAC, RaaS, and a UI for regulated environments. Same engine, same patterns.

Aria Automation Config ↗

What we do

One stack. Done properly. From open source to enterprise VMware integration.

Blue/Green Salt, Git-Driven

Zero-downtime · GitOps · Two-master pattern

Most Salt deployments are one master, one branch, one prayer. We build it the enterprise way: two Salt masters running side by side, your git repo as the only source of truth, and a CI pipeline that promotes change from develop → staging → production with a green/blue cutover. If a state breaks, the other master is still serving. You roll forward, not back.

Git as source of truth States, pillar, reactor, orchestration — all version controlled. Every change is a PR. Every deploy is a merge. Audit trail comes for free.
Two-master HA Active/active masters with synchronized state. Promote a release on one, validate, then flip. Minions never miss a beat.
Pipeline-driven promotion Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, GitLab — pick your poison. We wire SSH-driven gitpull services into your branches so every push is a controlled deploy.
Reactor + orchestration Event bus tied into reactor SLS so highstate, key acceptance, and post-deploy validation run automatically. No more "did the change apply?"

Salt — Free Edition

Open Source · Self-Hosted

Salt Project upstream, properly architected. Master/minion topology, pillar separation, environment splits, RBAC via external auth. Same enterprise patterns, no licence fees.

Salt — VMware Edition

Aria Automation Config · VCF

Aria Automation Config (formerly SaltStack Config / SSC), RaaS, and full VCF integration. Uplift from 8.17 / 3006.x, POC prerequisites, and master + RaaS install hardened for production.

Reactor & Orchestration

Event-Driven · Real-Time

Salt's event bus tied into reactor SLS so highstate, key acceptance, post-deploy validation, and incident response happen automatically. The event-driven layer most teams skip — and the reason your fleet runs itself.

Build it. Train them. Leave.

Modern AI has changed how engineering teams ship. We make sure yours catches up — and stays ahead.

Team Uplift — Git, AI, Vibecoding

Claude Code · GitHub Copilot · Cursor · VSCode

When we come in, we don't just deploy infrastructure — we rewire how your team works. Git flow becomes muscle memory. AI becomes the pair programmer your engineers don't want to work without. By the time we leave, you have a high-performance team that can automate anything, keep it simple, and rebuild from git in minutes if it breaks. No vendor lock-in. No Saltify-shaped hole.

Git flow, done right Branch strategy that fits your team. Pull requests with intent. GitOps-style promotion from develop to staging to prod. Every change a commit. Every commit reviewable. Every deploy a merge.
Vibecoding with AI Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, and Cursor wired into VSCode. Your engineers stop typing boilerplate states and start reviewing diffs. Productivity lifts on day one — and the gap between your team and theirs gets wider from there.
Version control as the source of truth Every state, every pillar, every reactor lives in git. Audit trail comes for free. Restore is git checkout. There's no "what changed?" — git already knows.
High-performance handover By the time we walk out, your team can automate anything new in days, not quarters. Simple by default. Restorable in minutes. No vendor dependence — just a team that's measurably better than the day we arrived.

Stop upgrading Salt in place.

There's a simpler way. It's also safer.

The default approach

In-place upgrade

  • Database migration runs against your live master
  • Multi-hour change window with the fleet locked out
  • Rollback means restore-from-backup — and pray
  • One failed state and the whole upgrade is in limbo
  • Audit trail is whatever someone screenshotted

The Saltify pattern

Blue/green cutover

  • Stand up a new master alongside the old
  • Copy the certs — minions don't notice the switch
  • Test the new stack under real load before cutover
  • Flip DNS or load balancer when you're happy
  • If something breaks: rebuild, don't restore

Anyone can build a complex solution for a complex problem. The hard part is making it simple. That's what we do.

FREE WALKTHROUGHS · NO SIGNUP

Start here · Curriculum

Saltify Academy.

The whole curriculum on one page. Five courses, two reference companions, one advanced track. The course we wish we had.

8 free guides
360 modules
0 sign-ups
Open the Academy →

Step 1 · Install

Build VCF Salt the right way.

The 3-server architecture we run in production. Eleven install steps. Blue/green ready. Never roll back a database again.

3 servers
11 steps
10min rebuild
Read the install guide →

Step 2 · Use it

Then write your first states.

From hello-world to pillar to Git. Windows + Linux side by side. Same rebuild-from-Git pattern, applied to your day-one workflow.

5 first states
11 real-world
Git ready
Read the tutorial →

Step 3 · Master states

The states that survive production.

The 6 daily state modules, the requisite system, four real production patterns, six anti-patterns. Without the spec sheet.

6 modules
4 requisites
4 real patterns
Read the states guide →

Step 4 · Windows

Salt on Windows. Production patterns, not theory.

Install the minion, learn the 6 quirks Salt has on Windows, manage software fleet-wide with winrepo. One scrollable page.

5 install steps
6 quirks
winrepo deep dive
Read the Windows guide →

Reference · Cheat Sheet

Every Salt command worth knowing.

60-ish commands organized by category. Vibe checks, keys, targeting, states, debug, jobs, network. Copy-paste ready. Bookmark this page.

60+ commands
8 categories
Cmd+D worthy
Read the cheat sheet →

Step 5 · Salt + AI

Make AI a real productivity multiplier.

AI writes plausible Salt YAML. Sometimes it runs. The patterns that actually work — plus the failure modes nobody warns you about.

7 sections
MCP setup
5 anti-patterns
Read Salt + AI →

Advanced · AI Tooling

The AI toolchain. Installed.

VSCode, the SaltStack extension, Copilot Chat, Claude in Chrome, Claude Code (IDE + terminal). Install commands lifted from official docs.

6 tools
25min read
SALT 501
Read AI Tooling →

Reference · State Modules

Every state module, mapped.

All 360 official Salt state modules, regrouped into 11 functional categories with usage examples. Search by what you're trying to do.

360 modules
11 categories
329 w/ examples
Browse all 360 →

No signup. No email gate. Just the playbook.

The Saltify thesis

The hard part isn't building a complex system. The hard part is making it simple.

Anyone can solve a complex problem with a complex solution. What's rare — and what we build — is a simple solution to a hard one.

Stand up a new stack. Test it. Flip the switch. If it breaks, rebuild. No drama. No 2am all-hands. No rollback procedure that nobody trusts.

How we work

Three phases. No surprises.

01

Assess

Your existing Salt (or no Salt). Master topology, git hygiene, pillar layout, the things people are scared to touch. We map it before we change it.

02

Deploy

Blue/green masters, git-driven gitpull, reactor + orchestration wired in. Free edition or Aria Automation Config — same pattern, same discipline.

03

Uplift

We hand it back with the team trained, AI in the pipeline writing states alongside them, and runbooks for the change patterns that matter.

Salt in the wild

Live from saltstack/salt — the latest releases of the engine we run.

Want to work together?

We're a small team and we keep it that way. If your Salt is fragile, manual, or about to be — reach out.

[email protected]