FAI (Fully Automatic Installation) vs Warewulf
FAI (Fully Automatic Installation)
fai-project.org
Warewulf
warewulf.orgSide by side
| Figure | FAI (Fully Automatic Installation) | Warewulf |
|---|---|---|
| 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 · Bare Metal Provisioning Software | 8.0 (#9) | 7.4 (#22) |
| Spec score · OS Imaging & Deployment Software | 7.9 (#9) | 7.4 (#15) |
| Founded | 1999 | 2001 |
| 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 project identifies container tooling, CI/CD pipelines, OpenHPC, Ansible, and Slurm among the tools and ecosystems it works with or aims to integrate with. |
| Purpose | FAI automates unattended mass deployment and configuration of Linux systems and software on computers and virtual machines. | Warewulf provisions and manages stateless Linux clusters, most prominently for high-performance computing. |
| Security | FAI packages are signed with Thomas Lange's GPG key, and the project lists Secure Boot support in FAI release 6.5.7. | Warewulf supports SELinux and offers asset-key checks, secure mode, optional TLS for runtime overlays, and Secure Boot with shim and GRUB. |
| 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. | Warewulf offers free documentation, Slack, and GitHub community resources, while commercial support is available through CIQ and SUSE. |
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.