Summary: Saltstack is a configuration management tool written in Python and is one of the newer contenders in the space that's been getting good adoption. Features: ZeroMQ is fast, without using SSH to interact with systems OnPremise open-source SaltAPI via CherryPy for extended functionality and automation Deployment: Set up a SaltMaster Install Salt-Minions Accept salt-minion keys on saltmaster Usability: Written in Python Write in YAML Jinja2 templating Maintainability: Easy updates via system package installers Pretty easy to pick up and write states Jinja2 templating provides for a lot of reusability List Pricing: On-Premise open-source Enterprise/Cloud - $150/machine/year I've honestly never taken the Enterprise route.

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Summary: Puppet is a configuration management tool written in Ruby that has been around for quite a long time. Features: SaaS-based Portal with local Agent Deployment OnPremise/Cloud Agnostic Application Performance Monitoring Server Infrastructure Monitoring Reasonably priced and simple to set up Log Management Synthetic API and Browser Testing Real-time User Monitoring Deployment: Set up PuppetMaster server Install Puppet Agents on hosts Minimally, agents can trust puppetmaster by hostname Usability: Puppet can be extremely useful and PuppetForge provides a vast amount of services and configurations you can manage.

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Summary: Jenkins is a popular solution for providing automated Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery of code to your infrastructure. Features: Open-Source, On-Premise but there are SaaS providers fueled by Jenkins Cloudbees being the most popular provider out there Cloud Agnostic Pipelines Lots and lots of plugins A vast and strong community of long-time users & contributors Deployment: Jenkins is available in most Linux distribution package managers at this point.

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Summary: Sentry is a crash analytics reporting platform. Features: SaaS-based or On-Premise Solutions Cloud Agnostic An Abundant amount of Languages & Frameworks Covered Filtering for Sensitive Data Deployment: Set up a Project in Sentry and choose your language or framework for simple step-by-step instructions. Add any additional instrumentation per instructions. Usability: Hands down this is one of the best bang for the buck tools out there for those of you interested in getting to the bottom of application crashes.

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Summary: Datadog aims to provide a suite of host, service, and user telemetry in a single platform. Features: SaaS-based Portal with local Agent Deployment OnPremise/Cloud Agnostic Application Performance Monitoring Server Infrastructure Monitoring Reasonably priced and simple to set up Log Management Synthetic API and Browser Testing Real-time User Monitoring Deployment: Datadog metrics are collected through an agent you install on your hosts It can be installed on many platforms and can be easily deployed through most Config Management systems Usability: Your CTO or CIO will enjoy clicking around this portal and can participate in intelligent decision-making based on results DevOps | SysAdmin | SRE types will find this product to be worth its money when they don't need to jump around in their browser to identify an outage root cause or to start identifying trends Custom dashboards can be built and catered to extend value to different audiences within your company Expect a bit of fine-tuning to stay on top of alert triggers but it works pretty well out-of-the-box Log Management is not as sophisticated with field-extraction as some more dedicated log management platforms Maintainability: Datadog provides regular releases to their Agent software and is easy to install Datadog Support is prompt, generally accurate, and thorough.

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