Rundeck User Story

Automating Operations Using SaltStack and Rundeck

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Kim Ho & Alan Caudill on Using Rundeck and SaltStack to Automate Operations

At a San Francisco Rundeck Meetup, Kim Ho and Alan Caudill of Salesforce.com described how they used Rundeck as part of a custom operations automation solution.

One of their initial use cases was around improving the repeatability and reliability of system provisioning.

In the past, their operators often had to run through complex run lists where there could be 12 or more steps, each with lots of sub-steps. They needed a way to remove the manual process and allow operators to push a button and get a fully provisioned host that is consistent and correct every time.

Beyond that use case, Salesforce had a variety of situations where they needed to automate processes across the various tools used in their environments. Those tools needed to be orchestrated and they needed a way to create repeatable and reusable jobs that can be shared across the organization.

To do this at scale (tens of thousands of nodes; thousands of jobs), the Salesforce.com team took a toolchain approach that features Rundeck, SaltStack, and a custom internal tool called Kingpin. The solution’s code name? Gigantor.

What is Gigantor?

  • Rundeck is the workflow engine and system of record

  • SaltStack is the distributed execution engine (Salesforce’s Kim Ho wrote the SaltStack plugin for Rundeck)

  • Kingpin is a custom front-end that builds Salesforce-specific concepts and additional security constraints into the user experience

Below are two videos of Kim’s and Alan’s public presentations the describe in more depth the use of Rundeck within their Gigantor solution.