Canonical Landscape vs Salt
Canonical Landscape
landscape.is.canonical.com
Salt
saltproject.ioSide by side
| Figure | Canonical Landscape | Salt |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $571.75/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 1 |
| Spec score · Configuration Management Tools | 8.8 (#3) | 8.3 (#9) |
| Spec score · IT Configuration Management Software | 8.6 (#6) | 8.3 (#12) |
| Identity integrations | Managed Landscape supports OpenID Connect and enterprise identity providers including Azure AD, Google, Okta, and IBM. | SaltStack Config supports LDAP, SAML, OIDC, and Active Directory integration. |
| Integrations | Landscape has a scriptable API and can integrate with existing configuration management, monitoring, and ticketing systems. | SaltStack Config integrates with LDAP, SAML, OIDC, and Active Directory. |
| Purpose | Landscape is Canonical’s systems management solution for managing Ubuntu desktops, servers, cloud instances, IoT devices, and other Ubuntu systems. | Salt is a Python-based, open-source framework for remote execution, configuration management, automation, provisioning, and orchestration. |
| Scale | A single instance can manage up to 40,000 machines, with the option to scale for larger deployments. | Salt can execute multiple commands across thousands of systems in seconds with a single execution. |
| Security | Landscape SaaS data in transit uses HTTPS with TLS and data at rest is encrypted using AES-128. | Salt uses RSA keys for authentication, AES keys for encryption, and rotates the AES key every 24 hours by default or when a minion is deleted. |
Plans
Canonical Landscape
- Landscape SaaS (Ubuntu Pro)Free
- Managed Landscape on public clouds, VMware, OpenStack or LXD$6,861 a year
- Managed Landscape on bare metal$9,470 a year
- Self-hosted LandscapePriced on request
In their own words
Canonical Landscape
Canonical Landscape manages Ubuntu desktops, servers, cloud instances, IoT devices, and other Ubuntu systems from a central portal. Administrators can handle updates, packages and repositories, run scripts remotely, set role-based access, and monitor machines. It can alert on updates and graph temperature, disk and memory use, system load, and custom metrics. One instance can manage up to 40,000 machines, with options to scale further. Deployment choices are Canonical-hosted SaaS, Managed Landscape, and self-hosted software; SaaS is bundled with Ubuntu Pro. A free SaaS account with Ubuntu Pro covers up to five machines. Managed Landscape costs $6,861 a year per physical machine on public clouds, VMware, OpenStack, or LXD, or $9,470 a year per physical machine on bare metal. No self-hosted price is listed; Ubuntu Pro is its main licensing mechanism. Landscape has a scriptable API and can integrate with configuration management, monitoring, and ticketing systems. Self-hosting requires the organization to install, host, and maintain it. SaaS does not currently offer repository mirroring or custom external identity-provider configuration.
Salt
Salt is a free, open-source framework for remote execution, configuration management, provisioning and infrastructure orchestration. A single execution can run commands across thousands of systems in seconds. A typical setup has a master managing minions, but Salt also supports agentless operation through salt-ssh or salt-proxy and stand-alone use. Salt states define configurations that can be extended and layered, while orchestration can order work by dependency, such as preparing a load balancer before a web-server cluster. Salt Cloud provisions systems on cloud hosts and hypervisors and can connect new virtual machines to a master. Its documented providers include Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, Azure, OpenStack, DigitalOcean, Linode, VMware and Proxmox. SaltStack Config adds a web interface, role-based access control, multi-master support, reporting and an enterprise API, along with LDAP, SAML, OIDC and Active Directory integrations. Salt uses RSA key authentication and encrypted master-minion communication. It is self-hosted and licensed under Apache 2.0.