A Trio to Remember – Tyson Foods, SUSE Manager and SaltStack

As you may have heard, we started planning for SUSECON 2017 and as we dove into this work I started to think about SUSECON 2016.  This was my first SUSECON, as I only joined the company earlier in the year.  I loved the music, the sessions and most of all the people.

One of the folks I enjoyed meeting and talking with most of all was Patrick Swartz, Lead Technical Analyst/Linux for Tyson Foods.  I had the opportunity to speak with him several times throughout the conference, learning more about him, his family and how he was using SUSE Manager and Salt.  I also attended the breakout session “SUSE Manager 3 & SaltStack @ Tyson Foods” that Patrick co-presented with Robert Booth, Consultant, SaltStack.

I am always interested in understanding what challenges our customers are trying to solve and how our solutions can help them to do that – and this session did not disappoint!  Patrick gave us an introduction to Tyson Foods, Inc. – a company that has over $40B in annual sales with 113,000 team members who work with over 11,000 independent farmers.  Their brands include Hillshire Farm, aidells and Jimmy Dean (who I met once in Newport, RI – but that is a story for another time).

Patrick shared that Tyson Foods has multiple data centers, with multiple server operating systems, VMware infrastructures and multiple teams (Linux, AIX, Windows, SAP App, SAP DB, others).  They were looking for a solution that would help them to reduce complexity (too many command lines), improve code/configuration standardization and improve team collaboration.  The solution they chose was SUSE Manager with Salt.  Patrick talked very openly about the implementation process, some of the bumps they encountered along the way and how they overcame the bumps.  He also talked about the implementation they have today and where they are trying to get tomorrow.  It was clear that there is great communication and collaboration between Patrick, SUSE and the SaltStack teams.

These real-world customer examples, shared by great folks like Patrick, are what makes SUSECON such a great event.  If you have a chance, I encourage you to go watch Patrick’s session from SUSECON 2016 and join us for SUSECON 2017, where you can talk face to face with the folks implementing and using SUSE solutions.