I've deployed it for a former company as well as personally for a variety of projects. It's extremely quick to get up and running, and as libcloud integration gets better, it's been providing me with a cloud platform-neutral way of deploying/maintaining systems.
It requires less time invested than fabric for me. Most of the time, the batteries included in salt are enough. When they aren't, it's the same amount of work to maintain as fabric, but salt tends to save me some time building pieces fabric wouldn't provide.
If you maintain multiple linux distros, the templated config files make smoothing over differences in package names or locations a breeze.
If you need to maintain Windows-based stuff, salt can be setup against Windows Server in a manner that wasn't too painful. This was extremely handy when consolidating management of legacy windows stuff with newer linux stuff from the same web gui.
Speaking of web gui, I don't know of any that have significant steam for salt. That said, doing "import salt" in django/flask/$framework and receiving json or pickled data is pretty easy.
It requires less time invested than fabric for me. Most of the time, the batteries included in salt are enough. When they aren't, it's the same amount of work to maintain as fabric, but salt tends to save me some time building pieces fabric wouldn't provide.
If you maintain multiple linux distros, the templated config files make smoothing over differences in package names or locations a breeze.
If you need to maintain Windows-based stuff, salt can be setup against Windows Server in a manner that wasn't too painful. This was extremely handy when consolidating management of legacy windows stuff with newer linux stuff from the same web gui.
Speaking of web gui, I don't know of any that have significant steam for salt. That said, doing "import salt" in django/flask/$framework and receiving json or pickled data is pretty easy.