Forester provides unattended bare-metal installation network boot workflow for Fedora, Red Hat or compatible OS images or bootable container images created by Image Builder. It utilizes PXE/EFI-HTTP, Redfish, Anaconda, SecureBoot and X509 for fast and secure image-based OS installations. Forester is a simple service with REST/RPC API, CLI and minimum configuration.
The project is currently in early development and we are looking for feedback.
Upload
Upload OS images created by Image Builder or Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console into Forester service. Supports bare-metal OS images and bootable container ISOs.
Configure
Setup your servers for HTTP UEFI Boot or PXE and configure Redfish credentials in Forester so it can discover your infrastructure. Configure your own DHCP server to advertise Forester as HTTP/TFTP service.
Deploy
Start deploying images onto your bare-metal servers en-masse via Forester API or CLI. Manage power operations or investigate Anaconda installer logs as needed.
To evaluate Forester, you need a Linux machine capable of running Podman containers (e.g. RHEL VM with 4 GB RAM). Servers for deployment need to have out-of-band management capability via Redfish protocol enabled (Dell IDRAC, HP iLO and others). Libvirt is supported for POC environments.