Canonical MAAS vs Salt
Canonical MAAS
canonical.com
Salt
saltproject.ioSide by side
| Figure | Canonical MAAS | Salt |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $2.50/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 8 | 1 |
| Spec score · IT Automation Software | 9.3 (#2) | 8.4 (#20) |
| Spec score · Orchestration / Provisioning Software | 9.3 (#1) | 8.3 (#8) |
| API | MAAS exposes a REST API with GET, POST, PUT and DELETE methods; version 2.0 is the documented supported API version. | Salt netapi modules provide network API access over REST through HTTP and WSGI and through WebSockets. |
| Integrations | Canonical documentation names Juju, Chef, Puppet, Ansible, Terraform, OpenStack and Kubernetes as MAAS automation or orchestration integrations. | SaltStack Config integrates with LDAP, SAML, OIDC, and Active Directory. |
| License | The MAAS source repository is distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3. | Salt is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. |
| Purpose | MAAS is an open source platform for centrally managing and provisioning physical servers as cloud resources. | Salt is a Python-based, open-source framework for remote execution, configuration management, automation, provisioning, and orchestration. |
Plans
Canonical MAAS
- FreeFree
- Self-supportFree
- Essential$30 a year
- Essential$30 a year
- Standard$50 a year
- Standard$50 a year
- Advanced$100 a year
- Advanced$100 a year
In their own words
Canonical MAAS
Canonical MAAS is an open source platform for provisioning physical servers as centrally managed cloud resources. It automates server discovery, inventory, commissioning, deployment, and decommissioning, and lets operators manage nodes through a web interface, command line, or API. Hardware discovery uses PXE boot and supports IPMI-enabled machines, as well as subnets, VLANs, and switch fabrics. MAAS integrates with Terraform, Juju, and Ansible for infrastructure automation. It can configure networking and storage, run hardware tests, and manage LXD and KVM virtual machines. Listed images include Ubuntu, CentOS, Windows, and RHEL; images can be synchronized or served from an onsite mirror for offline use. Canonical describes MAAS for private cloud with OpenStack, server automation, and bare-metal Kubernetes. A free self-support plan covers all machines but excludes HA support, RBAC, Knowledge Base, a Sev 1 response SLA, phone support, and ticket support. Paid plans start at $30 a year per managed machine. Ubuntu Pro is required for MAAS controllers; Canonical says it provides security patching and enterprise support for controllers and Ubuntu machines.
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.