debian automatic installation methods

[Jin Zhao]

First, I am not sure if this is the place for my question. I know this 
is the list for fai, but I have a more general question about all these 
different methods for automating debian installations.

I was a long time redhat user. Recently I started converting my servers 
from Redhat to Debian and find myself facing multiple ways for automatic 
installation -- fai, replicator, systemimager, autoinstall. Before 
deeply digging into these differents beasts,  I hope to hear suggestions 
from people who know debian much better than me. Can anybody introduce 
your own experiences with these methods and also your preferences for them?

My server farm is composed of machines with relatively differrent 
hardware setup -- different cpus (Intel, AMD), differrent disk 
controllers (Adaptec U320 SCSI, Adaptec U160 SCSI, 3wares SATA), and 
more servers are coming in weeks, most of which are 3wares SATA, Xeon 
servers. From what I learned so far, auto-install and fai seem more 
flexible than others. I am currently testing auto-install and will try 
fai later.

Any ideas are welcome. Hopefully people won't give me suggestion on fai 
only. :)

Thank,


Jin