AuroraBoot vs Foreman
AuroraBoot
github.com
Foreman
theforeman.orgSide by side
| Figure | AuroraBoot | Foreman |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | 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) | 8.7 (#5) |
| Provisioning | It provisions machines over PXE/netboot, Redfish or USB. | Foreman provisions bare-metal systems and instances across virtualization environments and public or private clouds. |
| Purpose | AuroraBoot is the official Kairos bootstrapper for building images, provisioning machines and managing fleets. | Foreman is an open-source tool for managing servers through provisioning, configuration, orchestration, and monitoring. |
| Security limitation | The netboot HTTP server is unauthenticated and serves kernel, initrd, squashfs and cloud-config over plain HTTP to reachable clients. | Foreman can run on a FIPS-enabled host, but Foreman itself is not FIPS-certified. |
| Support | Bug reports and feature requests are directed to the kairos-io/kairos issue tracker, and Kairos lists enterprise support contacts on its website. | Community support is available through the Discourse support board and a public Matrix room; the project says its support room is not an official support channel. |
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.
Foreman
Foreman is a free, open-source lifecycle management tool for physical and virtual servers. System administrators can use it to automate repetitive tasks, deploy applications, and manage on-premise or cloud systems. It provisions bare-metal machines and resources from providers including Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, OpenStack, Libvirt, oVirt, and VMware. Configuration integrations include Puppet, Ansible, Chef, and Salt; Foreman also collects Ansible reports and facts. Administrators can work through a web frontend, REST API, or Linux CLI, including Hammer CLI access to API calls. Role-based access control and integrations such as LDAP, FreeIPA, and Microsoft Active Directory support access management. Host groups, bulk management, health reports, and audits help organize systems and review changes. A typical deployment has a Foreman server, Smart Proxy servers, and managed hosts. The quickstart lists Enterprise Linux 9, Debian 12 and 13, and Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04, and requires 4 GB of memory. Installation configures multiple system components, and setup requires Linux system administration knowledge.