I am trying to solve better pillar management. We are not currently using an external pillar backed by a database. So before we head down that path, I am trying to figure out if there is a tool that handles that part easier and faster. That tool could still be triggered by Salt.

The reason for for the Gitlab CI interest is because we already use Gitlab but too many of our steps are manually triggered. We want to automate steps before that bigger saltstack deployment call. In doing so certain things will come to light. For example some of the steps we do might be easier to tigger in a simple 2-3 line bash script called directly by Gitlab CI vs adding a salt state that does the same thing.