guide gives bad advice on the use of Pillar

[mpounsett]

This document is the first hit when searching for things like getting started with saltstack, but gives some bad advice that will lead new users the wrong way. It presents Pillar as the only way to separate data from code, rather than as a thing to be used only for secrets. According to this very long thread on Slack, Pillar does not scale well enough to be the only source of data, and using things like map files (documented in the newer getting started documentation) is the best practice for most data.

I'm not sure I have good suggestions for how to deal with this document. The only solutions that come to mind are:

• rewrite the sections that mention Pillar to be clearer that it is not expected to be used for all data, and to include reference to other, better mechanisms for storing data
• remove the document from the Internet so that searches land on newer documentation

I gather this problem of searches landing people on out of date advice on Pillar is more widespread than just this document, so it may be that this Issue should be closed and either moved or merged with an umbrella issue somewhere.

[barbaricyawps]

Thanks so much for opening the issue, @mpounsett . I actually need to officially archive the old Getting Started guide so that it doesn't get picked up by search engines any more and start redirecting users to the new Salt User Guide instead. This is a great reminder of why I need to do that.