Chapter 1. Starting with the Basics

The vast majority of Salt users see it as a configuration management platform. And in truth, it handles that very well. But it did not start off with that as a design goal. In its early days, Salt was a communication framework that was designed to be useful even to those who did not write code. But for those who were willing, it was also designed to be heavily extensible to those users who had some Python in their toolbelt.

Before we get into writing modules, it will help to have a basic understanding of how the Salt module system works. In this chapter, you'll learn the following:

• How the loader system works
• How Salt uses Python