Why I Wrote This BookΒΆ

I have been thinking about writing this book for quite a long time. Based on my history with the Salt project, and my previous success as an author, I figured there was a prime opportunity for me to publish something in this space. I had kind of put the idea on the back burner until one day a co-worker asked me if there were any good Salt books available. To my knowledge there were none, and the idea resurfaced. I decided that day to try my hand at sharing the vision, and this is the result of that work.

In my preparation for writing this book I looked at a lot of the online documentation available for saltStack. The official docs and tutorials are detailed and generally well written. There is also a growing number of blog posts on the topic. The one thing that I found lacking though was the bottom-up approach. Instead of taking the time to describe how all of the pieces fit together, everyone seemed more interested in writing Quickstart guides. Something that could be easily consumed, liked, shared or retweeted. What was missing from all of these publications was the vision. The big picture. An exploration of the Salt Stack, from the foundation up. I decided that this was the way I wanted to address this book.

Lastly, I wrote this book because I’m very passionate about the topic. I sincerely believe that SaltStack is the way of the future. A fundamental change has occurred in the way we manage the Internet, and SaltStack is going to play a huge role. From small deployments to public and private clouds, SaltStack has the tools and the scaleability to allow us to manage a growing number of systems with ease. I truly believe that, once you get a glimpse of the big picture, you’ll change the way you look at your systems and regain an excitement for the future of computing.