AuroraBoot vs FAI (Fully Automatic Installation)
AuroraBoot
github.comFAI (Fully Automatic Installation)
fai-project.orgSide by side
| Figure | AuroraBoot | FAI (Fully Automatic Installation) |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Bare Metal Provisioning Software | 8.3 (#6) | 8.0 (#9) |
| Integrations | AuroraBoot documents Redfish BMC deployment, Canonical MaaS image generation, Docker or OCI images and Pixiecore netboot serving. | The maker documents receiving configuration over HTTP, NFS, SVN or Git, and adding SSH public keys from GitHub, GitLab, Debian Salsa or a custom URL in FAI.me. |
| Purpose | AuroraBoot is the official Kairos bootstrapper for building images, provisioning machines and managing fleets. | FAI automates unattended mass deployment and configuration of Linux systems and software on computers and virtual machines. |
| 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 project directs questions to its mailing list and bugs to the Debian Bug Tracking System, and says commercial support is available worldwide from the author. |
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.
FAI (Fully Automatic Installation)
FAI (Fully Automatic Installation) automates unattended deployment and configuration of Linux systems and software on physical computers and virtual machines. It is free software under GNU GPL version 2 or later and can scale from a few computers to several thousand. The project lists Debian, Ubuntu, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, Linux Mint, RHEL, and SUSE among supported distributions. Installations can use PXE network boot or unattended CD media, retrieving configuration through HTTP, NFS, SVN, or Git. Classes group similar machines, while hooks customize installation stages. FAI can partition disks, create file systems, and configure software RAID or LVM. It automates virtual-machine installation and customized cloud images for OpenStack, KVM, Azure, EC2, and GCE. FAI.me builds custom installation or live media and bootable disk images without local FAI installation, with settings for SSH keys, repositories, packages, scripts, and first-boot actions. Targets include desktops, servers, notebooks, clusters, server farms, and Linux labs or classrooms. The default large CD image includes full Debian XFCE and GNOME packages but fetches many other distribution packages over the network.