Check system requirements

To check if your operating system is supported, see:

• Salt supported operating systems
• Salt version support lifecycle

Salt runs on and manages many versions of Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. However, Salt’s ability to run on a specific operating system depends on whether that operating system will run the salt-master service or the salt-minion service.

Salt uses the master-client model in which a master node issues commands to a client node and the client runs the command. In the Salt ecosystem, the Salt master is a node that is running the salt-master service. It issues commands to one or more Salt minions, which are nodes that are running the salt-minion service and that are registered with that particular Salt master.

Some operating systems might be able to run both the salt-master service and the salt-minion service, which means nodes running that system can both manage and be managed by Salt.

Other operating systems may only be able to run the salt-minion package and can only be managed by a Salt master running a different operating system.

If you are setting up your environment for the first time, you should install a Salt master on a dedicated management server or VM, and then install a Salt minion on each system that you want to manage using Salt.

If you are first starting out with Salt, don’t worry too much about the need to plan your system architecture. You can add Salt components and modify your configuration later without reinstalling anything.