Casual DevOps: Automate Server Management and Configuration with Saltstack (for people who only need to do those things every now and then)

Do you have to manage a server every now and then? Maybe you are a developer working on a side project, you would like to put what you have made on the Internet, but managing the server infrastructure sounds like a huge pain. Maybe you are interested in a career change and are looking to add ‘automated server management and configuration’ (plus any number of other buzzwords) to your skill set. Maybe you’d like to be a bit more of a “full stack” developer. SaltStack is a very helpful tool to achieve these ends. However learning it requires a paradigm shift from other kinds of development and the wherewithal to navigate a few pitfalls. In this talk, I will make the case for why SaltStack (and other tools like it) are valuable and worth learning. I will give a brief overview of how it works, focusing on the parts that confused me the most. Then I will talk about some of the things I’ve done with it.

• Development
• Startups
• Other