What you need for this book

RedHat/CentOS/Scientific Linux, as Salt does not have support for Windows. However, the minion can be installed on a variety of systems including Solaris and Windows. The Salt system is based on Python and depends on a few Python libraries, which get automatically resolved and installed when a package manager is used to install the packages. If not automatically resolved, these dependencies need to be installed first.

Although a single system can be used to configure the master and minion, a network containing a few different systems is needed to configure and demonstrate Salt optimally by configuring a master and multiple minions, or each minion can be their own master as explained in the book.

Also, a working Internet connection is required to fetch packages for configuration.