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Docker vs Salt: What are the differences?
Docker: Enterprise Container Platform for High-Velocity Innovation. The Docker Platform is the industry-leading container platform for continuous, high-velocity innovation, enabling organizations to seamlessly build and share any application — from legacy to what comes next — and securely run them anywhere; Salt: Fast, scalable and flexible software for data center automation. Salt is a new approach to infrastructure management. Easy enough to get running in minutes, scalable enough to manage tens of thousands of servers, and fast enough to communicate with them in seconds Salt delivers a dynamic communication bus for infrastructures that can be used for orchestration, remote execution, configuration management and much more..
Docker and Salt are primarily classified as "Virtual Machine Platforms & Containers" and "Server Configuration and Automation" tools respectively.
Some of the features offered by Docker are:
- Integrated developer tools
- open, portable images
- shareable, reusable apps
On the other hand, Salt provides the following key features:
- Remote execution is the core function of Salt. Running pre-defined or arbitrary commands on remote hosts.
- Salt modules are the core of remote execution. They provide functionality such as installing packages, restarting a service, running a remote command, transferring files, and infinitely more
- Building on the remote execution core is a robust and flexible configuration management framework. Execution happens on the minions allowing effortless, simultaneous configuration of tens of thousands of hosts.
"Rapid integration and build up" is the primary reason why developers consider Docker over the competitors, whereas "Flexible" was stated as the key factor in picking Salt.
Docker and Salt are both open source tools. Docker with 54K GitHub stars and 15.6K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Salt with 10.1K GitHub stars and 4.59K GitHub forks.
According to the StackShare community, Docker has a broader approval, being mentioned in 3525 company stacks & 3445 developers stacks; compared to Salt, which is listed in 110 company stacks and 20 developer stacks.
lxd/lxc and Docker aren't congruent so this comparison needs a more detailed look; but in short I can say: the lxd-integrated administration of storage including zfs with its snapshot capabilities as well as the system container (multi-process) approach of lxc vs. the limited single-process container approach of Docker is the main reason I chose lxd over Docker.
Pros of Docker
- Rapid integration and build up824
- Isolation690
- Open source520
- Testability and reproducibility505
- Lightweight459
- Standardization217
- Scalable184
- Upgrading / downgrading / application versions105
- Security87
- Private paas environments84
- Portability33
- Limit resource usage25
- Game changer16
- I love the way docker has changed virtualization15
- Fast13
- Concurrency11
- Docker's Compose tools7
- Easy setup5
- Fast and Portable5
- Because its fun4
- Makes shipping to production very simple3
- It's dope2
- Highly useful2
- HIgh Throughput1
- Very easy to setup integrate and build1
- Package the environment with the application1
- Does a nice job hogging memory1
- Open source and highly configurable1
- Simplicity, isolation, resource effective1
- MacOS support FAKE1
- Its cool1
- Docker hub for the FTW1
- Super1
Pros of Salt
- Flexible47
- Easy30
- Remote execution27
- Enormously flexible24
- Great plugin API12
- Python10
- Extensible5
- Scalable3
- nginx2
- Vagrant provisioner1
- HipChat1
- Best IaaC1
- Automatisation1
- Parallel Execution1
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Cons of Docker
- New versions == broken features8
- Unreliable networking6
- Documentation not always in sync6
- Moves quickly4
- Not Secure3
Cons of Salt
- Bloated1
- Dangerous1
- No immutable infrastructure1