FAI (Fully Automatic Installation) vs Tengan
FAI (Fully Automatic Installation)
fai-project.org
Tengan
tengans.comSide by side
| Figure | FAI (Fully Automatic Installation) | Tengan |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Bare Metal Provisioning Software | 8.0 (#9) | 6.9 (#26) |
| 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. | The site lists Dell iDRAC, HPE iLO, Lenovo XClarity, Supermicro, Cisco CIMC, Fujitsu, Huawei, and Inspur, and says it is built on DMTF Redfish and IPMI 2.0. |
| 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 platform describes an AES-256 credential vault with automatic rotation, role-based access controls, and a tamper-evident action log. |
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.