FAI (Fully Automatic Installation) vs Supermicro SuperDoctor 5
FAI (Fully Automatic Installation)
fai-project.orgSupermicro SuperDoctor 5
supermicro.comSide by side
| Figure | FAI (Fully Automatic Installation) | Supermicro SuperDoctor 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Bare Metal Provisioning Software | 8.0 (#9) | 8.0 (#10) |
| Founded | 1999 | 1993 |
| Integrations | 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. | It provides SNMP extensions for network management systems and is compatible with Nagios plug-ins. |
| Purpose | FAI automates unattended mass deployment and configuration of Linux systems and software on computers and virtual machines. | SuperDoctor 5 monitors hardware health and system availability in data centers in real time and alerts administrators. |
| Support | 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. | The product page directs users to contact [email protected] for additional information. |
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.
Supermicro SuperDoctor 5
Supermicro SuperDoctor 5 is a free monitoring tool for data-center hardware health and system availability. It monitors target nodes in real time, covering fans, temperature, voltage, chassis intrusion, power, disks, RAID, and memory. It also provides 20 types of system information, including BIOS, memory, network, storage, and services. Administrators can use a web interface or command line and receive alerts by email or SNMP traps. SNMP extensions connect with network management systems, and the software is compatible with Nagios plug-ins and supports additional hardware and software monitoring plug-ins. Remote management includes graceful power off or reboot, software updates, and BIOS or BMC updates. It provides REST APIs and exports logs and reports in CSV and HTML. SuperDoctor 5 runs on Linux and Windows, but requires Supermicro servers, 200 MB of free disk space, 64 MB of RAM, and an Ethernet interface. The Standard plan is free, with no license required.