FAI (Fully Automatic Installation) vs Matchbox
FAI (Fully Automatic Installation)
fai-project.orgMatchbox
github.comSide by side
| Figure | FAI (Fully Automatic Installation) | Matchbox |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · OS Deployment Software | 7.9 (#10) | 7.5 (#16) |
| Purpose | FAI automates unattended mass deployment and configuration of Linux systems and software on computers and virtual machines. | Matchbox matches bare-metal machines to profiles for PXE booting and provisioning clusters. |
| Security | FAI packages are signed with Thomas Lange's GPG key, and the project lists Secure Boot support in FAI release 6.5.7. | The gRPC API uses TLS credentials for client authentication and a secure communication channel. |
Plans
In their own words
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.