Salt is designed first and foremost for remote execution. Most tasks in Salt are performed as a type of remote execution. One of the most common types of remote execution in Salt is configuration management, using States. Minion-specific data can be declared in Grains and Pillars, and used in State files and templates.

With a basic foundation of Salt behind us, let's move on to the good stuff. In the next chapter, we will dive into the internals of Salt, and discuss why and how Salt does what it does.