Software Alternatives & Reviews

Foreman VS Packer

Compare Foreman VS Packer and see what are their differences

Foreman logo Foreman

Foreman is an open source project that helps system administrators manage servers throughout their...

Packer logo Packer

Packer is an open-source software for creating identical machine images from a single source configuration.
  • Foreman Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-29
  • Packer Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-15

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Foreman and Packer)
Monitoring Tools
100 100%
0% 0
DevOps Tools
31 31%
69% 69
Continuous Integration And Delivery
Log Management
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using Foreman and Packer. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Foreman and Packer

Foreman Reviews

12 Open Source/Commercial Software for Data Center Infrastructure Management
Foreman is an open-source and perfect life-cycle management application for physical and virtual servers, that give Linux system administrators the capability to easily automate repetitive jobs, rapidly deploy applications, and proactively manage servers, on-premise or in the cloud.
Source: www.tecmint.com

Packer Reviews

Introduction to Top Open Source Virtualization Tools
Packer is notably light, high performing, and operates on every major operating system. It assembles and configures all the necessary components for a virtual machine then creates images that run on multiple platforms. Packer doesn’t replace configuration management tools like Puppet or Chef; as a matter of fact, when creating images, Packer can utilize tools like Puppet or...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Foreman should be more popular than Packer. It has been mentiond 18 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Foreman mentions (18)

  • Deploying 100+ windows 10 devices per week. Need to automate.
    In case you're unable to use intune, a free approach might be https://theforeman.org/ That works well for provisioning baremetal windows (with discovery image or pxe boot) once you've set it up. It supports script access as well as a nice hierarchy for configurations. But it's really not as well documented as it should be. Source: 12 months ago
  • Configuration Management Tools for 20-30 servers
    I use the foreman with puppet and pxe/kickstart scripts to automate VM/baremetal provisioning etc. Source: 12 months ago
  • Server management tool with GUI
    Might want to look into https://theforeman.org/ if it's not too complex for you. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Stockpiling Linux ISOs?
    The iso images are typically locked at a certain verison. The update repositories sounds like what you are looking for to cache updates. Look into theforeman.org and specifically the plugin Katello. This is an upstream for Red Hat's Satellite product. Another option would be Canonical's MAAS. Both of these options Sound like what you are headed for unless you really just mean synchronize into a folder and store... Source: over 1 year ago
  • Repo satellite 6 beta error 404 repomd.xml
    Alternatively, you can use Foreman+Katello, the upstream base of Satellite, to get started in learning the platform. You can also use the component matrix to use the versions that most closely resemble Satellite. Source: over 1 year ago
View more

Packer mentions (9)

  • Failed to connect to the host via SSH on Ubuntu 22.04
    If you have just upgraded to Ubuntu 22.04, and you suddenly experience either errors when trying to ssh into hosts, or when running ansible or again when running the ansible provisioner building a packer image, this is probably going to be useful for you. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Create a minimalist OS using Docker Containers and Hashicorp Packer
    I am already using Hashicorp Packer at work and for personal projects and I wanted to test This idea out by wrapping it a single Packer Template file. This reduces the level of maintaining a lot of small scripts, Dockerfiles and configurations and the user can simply trigger a couple of Commands to get a minimalist OS at the end of the process. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel. The oligopoly has won.
    And while it is a slight increase in complexity, it can be an overall net gain in functionality, configurability and reliability. Much like Packer is far more reliable and practical than manually making VM images sitting in front of a terminal, even though making the initial configuration takes some time. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Customized Ubuntu Images using Packer + QEMU + Cloud-Init & UEFI bootloading
    Hashicorp Packer provides a nice wrapper / abstraction over the QEMU in order to boot the image and use it to set it up on first-boot. Instead of writing really long commands in order to boot up the image using QEMU, Packer provided a nice Configuration Template in a more Readable fashion. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • The journey of sharing a wired USB printer over the network
    Packer seemed like the perfect tool for the job. I have never used it before and wanted to get familiar with the tool. It doesn't come with ARM support out of the box, but there are two community projects to fill that niche. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Foreman and Packer, you can also consider the following products

Ansible - Radically simple configuration-management, application deployment, task-execution, and multi-node orchestration engine

Terraform - Tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently.

DCImanager - DCImanager is a platform for managing physical equipment. Connect any physical equipment to a single platform. Use the platform to manage your servers, switches, PDU as well as physical and virtual networks.

Rancher - Open Source Platform for Running a Private Container Service

NetBox - NetBox is an open source web application designed to help manage and document computer networks. NetBox was developed specifically to address the needs of network and infrastructure engineers.

Puppet Enterprise - Get started with Puppet Enterprise, or upgrade or expand.