Short Summary
Created in 2007 by Michael DeHaan, Cobbler is a Linux installation server that allows for rapid setup of network installation environments. It glues together and automates many associated Linux tasks so you do not have to hop between lots of various commands and applications when rolling out new systems, and, in some cases, changing existing ones. It can help with installation, DNS, DHCP, package updates, power management, configuration management orchestration, and much more.
Cobbler was originally a Fedora/Red Hat sponsored project, and is currently a key part of the Red Hat Satellite/Spacewalk project. Since March of 2012, the project leadership has changed and it is no longer receiving direct support from Red Hat in terms of money or development contributions.
As the new project leader, I have been focused on increasing the quality of the code as well as the supporting documentation. As a result, the user base has once again started to grow, and Cobbler remains in use in hundreds of corporations, government agencies, and universities worldwide.
What We Need & What You Get
We would like to raise money to pay for the following goals:
- New hardware to add IaaS features to cobbler. Specifically, we are looking to add support for deploying Cobbler-based images to OpenStack and Eucalyptus. As such, we'll need a few new servers to create a small private cloud for testing.
- New hardware to build a dedicated test rig (namely Jenkins) to run continuous integration tests.
- Funds to help pay for the maintenance (power, etc.) for all of the above hardware.
Version 2.4.0 is currently in alpha, and should be released in the upcoming months. Cloud-based features will be added to later 2.4.x series. Having dedicated test setups will increase the speed and quality of releases while allowing more features to be added.
As a contributor you'll earn our undying gratitude, of course, but you'll also be immortalized on our website on a supporters page. And, if you're a business and contribute at the platinum level, we will put your logo on our front page, http://cobbler.github.com, which receives between 700-1200 page views per day.
The Impact
As I mentioned above, Cobbler has been around for quite a while and is in use at a large number of major corporations, government agencies, and universities. Our "Who's Using Cobbler" page is a very small sample.
Due to the fact that Cobbler is now an independent project with no official corporate backing, it is completely supported by volunteers. As the maintainer, most days I work a full 8+ hours and then come home and spend another 4-8 hours answering emails, writing code and testing for bugs.
By contributing, you're not only helping the project get better, you're also validating the hundreds of hours of work we put into the project.
Other Ways You Can Help
Not interested in contributing? No problem! Just do us a favor and spread the word to anyone you might know that uses Cobbler for their day to day jobs, or check out the code on Github and start contributing!
