If you run SaltStack to manage Windows and Linux, the commercial console on top of it now has a published end date, and it is in Broadcom's own knowledge base. Below are the facts with sources, and the realistic options.
What happened to commercial Salt
Open-source Salt is fine. What has the end date is the commercial console, the supported UI that sat on top of it.
That console has had a lot of owners and names. SaltStack sold to VMware in 2020, VMware sold to Broadcom in 2023, and along the way the product went from SaltStack Enterprise to vRealize Automation SaltStack Config, Aria Automation Config, Tanzu Salt, and now VCF Salt.
Broadcom has now set October 2028 as end of support for the standalone console, or sooner if your contract ends first (KB 413088). Salt is still sold inside VMware Cloud Foundation, but the standalone product is on a clock. It is licensed per CPU core with a 16-core minimum per processor (program terms, May 2025).
What surprised me most is that upgrading your masters to open-source Salt 3008, the current LTS, cuts them off from the console. Getting them back means installing a patched plugin by hand on every master, and that plugin is not available through the product's own UI (KB 448159). Staying current on Salt and staying supported on the console now pull in opposite directions.
What you keep, and what you lose
You keep Salt. Your states, pillars, keys and minions run on 3006, 3007 and 3008 the same as before, and the event bus and execution modules are not going anywhere.
What goes away is the layer around it: the supported web UI, single sign-on, role-based access, a security SLA, and someone to call at 2am. That layer is the hard part to replace in a hurry, which is why I would rather people plan now than at renewal.
The options
Self-support on open-source Salt. Completely viable if your team knows Salt well and does not need a vendor. SaltGUI is the usual open-source UI, and it is a solid one for people who already know Salt. It is not a managed console with SSO and support, and it does not try to be.
Stay on Broadcom's console until 2028, or move into VCF. This buys time. You keep paying per core and you still have to work around the 3008 plugin issue, and the decision is still waiting for you at a renewal.
Leave Salt for Ansible or something else. The biggest project of the four. You give up the always-connected agents and you rewrite or wrap your states. Sometimes it is the right call. Price it carefully first.
Keep Salt and put a supported layer on top. Same fleet, same states, with the UI, SSO, SLA and support coming from somewhere that does not charge per core and does not end in 2028.
Disclosure
That last option is what I built. It is called Gardience (from the French gardien, a guardian). It is a supported console on open-source Salt 3006, 3007 and 3008 for Windows and Linux. It keeps your existing states, pillars, keys and agents, ships a STIG/CIS-aligned baseline, and costs one flat yearly price instead of per core. It is independent of Broadcom. If one of the other three options fits you better, take it. More at gardience.com.
It is not just Salt
Salt is one example of a broader pattern. Over the last two years, several tools Windows and Linux shops leaned on were sold, closed or deprecated, and the pricing moved to per core, per server or per seat.
Microsoft deprecated WSUS in September 2024 (notice). Its answer for servers, Azure Update Manager, lists about $5 per server per month for machines outside Azure, and they have to be connected to Azure (FAQ). In 2025 Perforce moved Puppet's packages to a private repository, with a commercial license needed past 25 nodes, and the community forked it as OpenVox (DevClass, The New Stack). And in March 2026, Ivanti Endpoint Manager was back on CISA's list of actively exploited vulnerabilities (KEV catalog).
My takeaway: keep your automation on an open foundation you control. Then a vendor's roadmap change is an inconvenience instead of a migration.
If you are on the commercial console
The date is public now: October 2028 for the standalone product, earlier if your contract ends first, and the current Salt LTS already breaks the console. No need to panic. Just know your options before a renewal picks one for you.
