Network Automation using Salt and salt-sproxy

I've been using Salt to manage network gear for quite some time, and while I'm a big fan of its event-driven approach to automation, flexibility and extensibility, I've always felt that having to manage thousands of Proxy Minion processes can sometimes be a burden. Make no mistake, I'm not saying we should all give up using Proxy Minions, but I do realize that an always running service might not always justify its cost. As an user, I've experienced this too at my last two employers: I would definitely use Proxy Minions to manage the edge of the network (or anything that is highly dynamic), but there was always the question in my head: how can I manage those devices that we don't regularly touch - for instance console servers, or CPEs of a service provider network?

After years of looking into this challenge, the solution was much easier than I thought, and today I'm happy to open source salt-sproxy: https://github.com/mirceaulinic/salt-sproxy In brief, salt-sproxy is a Salt plugin that allows you to manage network devices (but not limited to), without the constraint of running thousands of Proxy Minion services -- simply install and start automating straight away.

The complete documentation is available at https://salt-sproxy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ and I would invite you to take a closer look to better understand how to use and what are the available features. As it's relying on Salt, you would still need to be familiar with the Salt fundamentals, so if you haven't worked with Salt before, check out this list of articles to get a better understanding: https://github.com/mirceaulinic/salt-sproxy#prerequisites.

For a general overview, I've also wrote a blog post on this, which you can read at https://mirceaulinic.net/2019-06-17-minionless-salt-automation/.

If you'll find this useful, remember to start it on GitHub and why not Tweet about it, or share it with your friends: https://github.com/mirceaulinic/salt-sproxy.

I'm very much looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this, and learn from your experience. I'm offering this completely for free, and I'm documenting everything I think it may help you. If there's anything missing or unclear, let me know. As a growing community, it's in our best interest to be open and communicate feedback, because that's how we can improve.

If you have an idea, or hit a bug, make sure to report it at https://github.com/mirceaulinic/salt-sproxy/issues/new/choose.

Hope this helps!