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Automatically install and configure systems
Mass Production
Infrastructure automation is ubiquitous now, but long before Puppet, Chef, and Ansible came on the scene, FAI (fully automatic installation) was deploying Linux across servers and installing and configuring software without the need for interaction. Although FAI has been around since 1999, it is still an active project and an excellent option for infrastructure automation.
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Automation is the basis for economies of scale as a result of the synergistic effects it generates. The initial work that flows into the automation of a platform then pays dividends with each new node that is added and does not require hours of configuration.
Automation occurs at many levels, starting with the infrastructure and extending to include, for example, switch configuration or the deployment of services and their configuration to turn a basic system into a functioning node that hosts virtual machines in a cloud. Automation also includes the operating system. Rolling out a Linux distribution manually – as every admin knows – is no longer a complicated task, but still a tedious one. However, it's also easy to automate: as Red Hat's Kickstart or preseeding with the Debian installer bear witness.
FAI is a separate software tool that enters the scene with its claim to install Linux operating systems in the shortest possible time. FAI is not limited to a specific distribution; it supports Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, and other lesser known candidates. (See the "Reinventing the Wheel?" box.)
Reinventing the Wheel?
Some might ask, in the face of FAI, how useful it actually is; after all, various distribution-specific mechanisms already exist. Mixed environments don't occur that often – for example, Ubuntu and Red Hat in the same environment would be an exception rather than the
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