AuroraBoot vs DRBL
AuroraBoot
github.comDRBL
drbl.orgSide by side
| Figure | AuroraBoot | DRBL |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Bare Metal Provisioning Software | 8.3 (#6) | 7.8 (#12) |
| Purpose | AuroraBoot is the official Kairos bootstrapper for building images, provisioning machines and managing fleets. | DRBL manages deployment of the GNU/Linux operating system across many clients from one server. |
| Support | Bug reports and feature requests are directed to the kairos-io/kairos issue tracker, and Kairos lists enterprise support contacts on its website. | The installation guide directs users to report bugs by generating a drbl-bug-report report and emailing the DRBL user mailing list or posting in the DRBL forum. |
Plans
In their own words
AuroraBoot
AuroraBoot is Kairos’s bootstrapper for creating machine images, provisioning systems, and managing fleets. It builds ISO, UKI, raw disk, and system-extension images from Kairos flavors or container images, then supports provisioning by PXE/netboot, Redfish, or USB. Its fleet server pairs a browser dashboard for artifact building, deployment, and node management with a REST API and Go client; API documentation is available through Swagger UI at /api/docs. Registered nodes can receive upgrades, reboots, resets, cloud-config, and shell commands, with command output captured. The guided Artifact Builder offers templates for Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, openSUSE, Alpine, Rocky, and Hadron. A SecureBoot key store handles PK, KEK, db, and TPM PCR policy keys, with signed export and import. Documented architectures are amd64, arm64, and riscv64. The self-hosted software is free under Apache License 2.0; its fleet server uses SQLite by default and can use PostgreSQL. Docker or a container engine is required. One security consideration: netboot serves files over unauthenticated plain HTTP to reachable clients.
DRBL
DRBL deploys GNU/Linux from one server to many client machines. Clients can boot through PXE or etherboot in a diskless or systemless environment, so GNU/Linux need not be installed on each client drive. DRBL says clients can use distributed hardware resources while retaining full local-hardware access, and that other installed systems such as Windows remain untouched. Clonezilla is included for partitioning and disk cloning. Commands can change boot modes, copy files, manage user accounts and issue instructions across clients. DRBL uses PXE/etherboot, NFS and NIS for network services and supports network and multicast deployment. The free, open-source software is intended for Linux and self-hosted setups. Its installation guide supports Debian Bullseye and Buster, Ubuntu Jammy and Focal, CentOS 7, Scientific Linux 7.x and RHEL 7.x; other distributions or versions will not work. DRBL Live is available for CD/DVD or USB and hard drives in amd64, i686-pae and i686 formats.