A curated list of amazingly awesome open-source sysadmin resources.
Awesome Sysadmin
A curated list of amazingly awesome Free and Open-Source sysadmin resources. Please read the Pull Request template if you wish to add software and consider donating to the FLOSS projects you use regularly. Please consider contributing to fix one of the pinned issues if your time allows.
Apache Ant - Automation build tool, similar to make, a library and command-line tool whose mission is to drive processes described in build files as targets and extension points dependent upon each other. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Java
Apache Maven - Build automation tool mainly for Java. A software project management and comprehension tool. Based on the concept of a project object model (POM), Maven can manage a project's build, reporting and documentation from a central piece of information. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Java
Bazel - A fast, scalable, multi-language and extensible build system. Used by Google. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Java
Bolt - You can use Bolt to run one-off tasks, scripts to automate the provisioning and management of some nodes, you can use Bolt to move a step beyond scripts, and make them shareable. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Ruby
GNU Make - The most popular automation build tool for many purposes, make is a tool which controls the generation of executables and other non-source files of a program from the program's source files. (Source Code) GPL-3.0C
Gradle - Another build automation system. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Groovy/Java
Rake - Build automation tool similar to Make, written in and extensible in Ruby. (Source Code) MITRuby
Amanda - Backup and archive many computers on a network to disk, tape changer/drive or cloud storage. (Source Code) MITC
Backupninja - Lightweight, extensible meta-backup system, provides a centralized way to configure and coordinate many different backup utilities. GPL-2.0Shell
BackupPC - High-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing up to a server's disk.. (Source Code) GPL-3.0Perl
Bareos - Cross-network backup solution which preserves, archives, and recovers data from all major operating systems. (Source Code) AGPL-3.0C++/C
Barman - Backup and Recovery Manager for PostgreSQL. (Source Code) GPL-3.0Python
BorgBackup - Deduplicating archiver with compression and authenticated encryption. (Source Code) BSD-3-ClausePython
Burp - Network backup and restore program. (Source Code) AGPL-3.0C
Dar - Which stands for Disk ARchive, is a robust and rich featured archiving and backup software of the tar style. (Source Code) GPL-2.0C++
Duplicati - Backup client that securely stores encrypted, incremental, compressed backups on cloud storage services and remote file servers. (Source Code) LGPL-2.1C#
Duplicity - Encrypted bandwidth-efficient backup using the rsync algorithm. (Source Code) GPL-2.0Python
Proxmox Backup Server - Proxmox Backup Server is an enterprise-class, client-server backup solution thatis capable of backing up virtual machines, containers, and physical hosts. (Source Code) GPL-3.0Rust
rclone - Command-line program to sync files and directories to and from different cloud storage providers.. (Source Code) MITGo
Rdiff-backup - Reverse differential backup tool, over a network or locally. (Source Code) GPL-2.0Python
Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user.
Code review is a software quality assurance activity in which one or several people check a program mainly by viewing and reading parts of its source code.
Configuration management (CM) is a systems engineering process for establishing and maintaining consistency of a product's performance, functional, and physical attributes with its requirements, design, and operational information throughout its life.
CFEngine - Configuration management system for automated configuration and maintenance of large-scale computer systems. (Source Code) GPL-3.0C
Chef - Configuration management tool using a pure-Ruby, domain-specific language (DSL) for writing system configuration "recipes". (Source Code) Apache-2.0Ruby
Puppet - Software configuration management tool which includes its own declarative language to describe system configuration. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Ruby/C
Rudder - Scalable and dynamic configuration management system for patching, security & compliance, based on CFEngine. (Source Code) GPL-3.0Scala
Salt - Event-driven IT automation, remote task execution, and configuration management software. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Python
Concourse - Concourse is a CI tool that treats pipelines as first class objects and containerizes every step along the way. (Demo, Source Code) Apache-2.0Go
drone - Drone is a Continuous Delivery platform built on Docker, written in Go. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Go
Factor - Programmatically define and run workflows to connect configuration management, source code management, build, continuous integration, continuous deployment and communication tools. (Source Code) MITRuby
Tools and scripts to support deployments to your servers.
Capistrano - Deploy your application to any number of machines simultaneously, in sequence or as a rolling set via SSH (rake based). (Source Code) MITRuby
CloudSlang - Flow-based orchestration tool for managing deployed applications, with Docker capabilities. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Java
CloudStack - Cloud computing software for creating, managing, and deploying infrastructure cloud services. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Java/Python
Cobbler - Cobbler is a Linux installation server that allows for rapid setup of network installation environments. (Source Code) GPL-2.0Python
Fabric - Python library and cli tool for streamlining the use of SSH for application deployment or systems administration tasks. (Source Code) BSD-2-ClausePython
Genesis - A template framework for multi-environment BOSH deployments. MITPerl
munki - Webserver-based repository of packages and package metadata, that allows macOS administrators to manage software installs. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Python
Overcast - Deploy VMs across different cloud providers, and run commands and scripts across any or all of them in parallel via SSH. (Source Code) MITNodejs
DRBD - Distributed replicated storage system, implemented as a Linux kernel driver. (Source Code) GPL-2.0C
GlusterFS - Software-defined distributed storage that can scale to several petabytes, with interfaces for object, block and file storage. (Source Code) GPL-2.0/LGPL-3.0C
JuiceFS - Distributed POSIX file system built on top of Redis and S3. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Go
Kubo - Implementation of IPFS, a global, versioned, peer-to-peer filesystem that seeks to connect all computing devices with the same system of files. Apache-2.0/MITGo
OpenAFS - Distributed network file system with read-only replicas and multi-OS support. (Source Code) IPL-1.0C
Openstack Swift - A highly available, distributed, eventually consistent object/blob store. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Python
Perkeep - A set of open source formats, protocols, and software for modeling, storing, searching, sharing and synchronizing data (previously Camlistore). (Source Code) Apache-2.0C
TahoeLAFS - Secure, decentralized, fault-tolerant, peer-to-peer distributed data store and distributed file system. (Source Code) GPL-2.0Python
XtreemFS - Distributed, replicated and fault-tolerant file system for federated IT infrastructures.. (Source Code) BSD-3-ClauseJava
Vim - A highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient editing. (Source Code) VimC
VSCodium - An open source cross-platform extensible code editor based on VS Code by Microsoft removing their non-free additions. (Source Code) MITTypeScript
Identity management (IdM), also known as identity and access management (IAM or IdAM), is a framework of policies and technologies to ensure that the right users (that are part of the ecosystem connected to or within an enterprise) have the appropriate access to technology resources.
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network.
Single sign-on (SSO) is an authentication scheme that allows a user to log in with a single ID to any of several related, yet independent, software systems.
Authelia - The Single Sign-On Multi-Factor portal for web apps. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Go
Authentik - Flexible identity provider with support for different protocols. (OAuth 2.0, SAML, LDAP and Radius). (Source Code) MITPython
KeyCloak - Open Source Identity and Access Management. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Java
GLPI - Information Resource-Manager with an additional Administration Interface. (Source Code) GPL-3.0PHP
OCS Inventory NG - Asset management and deployment solution for all devices in your IT Department. (Source Code) GPL-2.0PHP/Perl
OPSI - Hardware and software inventory, client management, deployment, and patching for Linux and Windows. (Source Code) GPL-3.0/AGPL-3.0OVF/Python
RackTables - Datacenter and server room asset management like document hardware assets, network addresses, space in racks, networks configuration. (Demo, Source Code) GPL-2.0PHP
Ralph - Asset management, DCIM and CMDB system for large Data Centers as well as smaller LAN networks. (Demo, Source Code) Apache-2.0Python/Docker
Fluentd - Data collector for unified logging layer. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Ruby
Flume - Distributed, reliable, and available service for efficiently collecting, aggregating, and moving large amounts of log data. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Java
GoAccess - Real-time web log analyzer and interactive viewer that runs in a terminal or through the browser. (Source Code) MITC
Loki - Log aggregation system designed to store and query logs from all your applications and infrastructure. (Source Code) AGPL-3.0Go
An email client, email reader or, more formally, message user agent (MUA) or mail user agent is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email.
aerc - Terminal MUA with a focus on plaintext and features for developers. (Source Code) MITGo
Claws Mail - Old school email client (and news reader), based on GTK+. (Source Code) GPL-3.0C
ImapSync - Simple IMAP migration tool for copying mailboxes to other servers. (Source Code) NLPLPerl
Mutt - Small but very powerful text-based mail client. (Source Code) GPL-2.0C
Sylpheed - Still developed predecessor to Claws Mail, lightweight mail client. (Source Code) GPL-2.0C
Thunderbird - Free email application that's easy to set up and customize. (Source Code) MPL-2.0C/C++
Beats - Single-purpose data shippers that send data from hundreds or thousands of machines and systems to Logstash or Elasticsearch. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Go
RRDtool - Industry standard, high performance data logging and graphing system for time series data. (Source Code) GPL-2.0C
Statsd - Daemon that listens for statistics like counters and timers, sent over UDP or TCP, and sends aggregates to one or more pluggable backend services. MITNodejs
tcollector - Gathers data from local collectors and pushes the data to OpenTSDB. (Source Code) LGPL-3.0/GPL-3.0Python
Telegraf - Plugin-driven server agent for collecting, processing, aggregating, and writing metrics. MITGo
Adagios - Web based Nagios interface for configuration and monitoring (replacement to the standard interface), and a REST interface. (Source Code) AGPL-3.0Docker/Python
cadvisor - Analyzes resource usage and performance characteristics of running containers. Apache-2.0Go
checkmk - Comprehensive solution for monitoring of applications, servers, and networks. (Source Code) GPL-2.0Python/PHP
dashdot - A simple, modern server dashboard for smaller private servers. (Demo) MITNodejs/Docker
EdMon - A command-line monitoring application helping you to check that your hosts and services are available, with notifications support. MITJava
eZ Server Monitor - A lightweight and simple dashboard monitor for Linux, available in Web and Bash application. (Source Code) GPL-3.0PHP/Shell
glances - Open-source, cross-platform real-time monitoring tool with CLI and web dashboard interfaces and many exporting options. (Source Code) GPL-3.0Python
Healthchecks - Monitoring for cron jobs, background services and scheduled tasks. (Source Code) BSD-3-ClausePython
Icinga - Nagios fork that has since lapped nagios several times. Comes with the possibility of clustered monitoring. (Source Code) GPL-2.0C++
LibreNMS - Fully featured network monitoring system that provides a wealth of features and device support. (Source Code) GPL-3.0PHP
Linux Dash - A low-overhead monitoring web dashboard for a GNU/Linux machine. MITNodejs/Go/Python/PHP
Monit - Small utility for managing and monitoring Unix systems. (Source Code) AGPL-3.0C
Netdata - Distributed, real-time, performance and health monitoring for systems and applications. Runs on Linux, FreeBSD, and MacOS. (Source Code) GPL-3.0C
NetXMS - Open Source network and infrastructure monitoring and management. (Source Code) LGPL-3.0/GPL-3.0Java/C++/C
Observium Community Edition - Network monitoring and management platform that provides real-time insight into network health and performance. QPL-1.0PHP
Platform-as-a-Service software allows customers to provision, instantiate, run, and manage a computing platform and one or more applications, without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure typically associated with developing and launching the application. Also includes Serverless computing and Function-as-a-service (FaaS) software.
CapRover - Build your own PaaS in a few minutes. (Demo, Source Code) Apache-2.0Docker/Nodejs
Coolify - An open-source & self-hostable Heroku / Netlify alternative (and even more). (Source Code) Apache-2.0Docker
Dokku - An open-source PaaS (alternative to Heroku). (Source Code) MITDocker/Shell/Go/deb
fx - A tool to help you do Function as a Service with painless on your own servers. MITGo
Kubero - A self-hosted Heroku PaaS alternative for Kubernetes that implements GitOps. (Demo, Source Code) GPL-3.0K8S/Nodejs/Go
LocalStack - LocalStack is a fully functional local AWS cloud stack. This includes Lambda for serverless computation. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Python/Docker/K8S
Nhost - Firebase Alternative with GraphQL. Get a database and backend configured and ready in minutes. (Source Code) MITDocker/Nodejs/Go
OpenFaaS - Serverless Functions Made Simple for Docker & Kubernetes. (Source Code) MITGo
Tau - Easily build Cloud Computing Platforms with features like Serverless WebAssembly Functions, Frontend Hosting, CI/CD, Object Storage, K/V Database, and Pub-Sub Messaging. (Source Code) BSD-3-ClauseGo/Rust/Docker
A package manager or package-management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner.
aptly - Swiss army knife for Debian repository management. (Source Code) MITGo
fpm - Versatile multi format package creator. (Source Code) MITRuby
omnibus-ruby - Easily create full-stack installers for your project across a variety of platforms. Apache-2.0Ruby
tito - Builds RPMs for git-based projects. GPL-2.0Python
Message queues and message broker software, typically used for inter-process communication (IPC), or for inter-thread communication within the same process.
DD-WRT - A Linux-based firmware for wireless routers and access points, originally designed for the Linksys WRT54G series. (Source Code) GPL-2.0C
OpenWrt - A Linux-based router featuring Mesh networking, IPS via snort and AQM among many other features. (Source Code) GPL-2.0C
OPNsense - An open source FreeBSD-based firewall and router with traffic shaping, load balancing, and virtual private network capabilities. (Source Code) BSD-2-ClauseC/PHP
pfSense CE - Free network firewall distribution, based on the FreeBSD operating system with a custom kernel and including third party free software packages for additional functionality. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Shell/PHP/Other
Service discovery is the process of automatically detecting devices and services on a computer network.
Consul - Consul is a tool for service discovery, monitoring and configuration. (Source Code) MPL-2.0Go
etcd - Distributed K/V-Store, authenticating via SSL PKI and a REST HTTP Api for shared configuration and service discovery. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Go
ZooKeeper - ZooKeeper is a centralized service for maintaining configuration information, naming, providing distributed synchronization, and providing group services. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Java/C++
Docker - Platform for developers and sysadmins to build, ship, and run distributed applications. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Go
LXC - Userspace interface for the Linux kernel containment features. (Source Code) GPL-2.0C
LXD - Container "hypervisor" and a better UX for LXC. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Go
OpenVZ - Container-based virtualization for Linux. (Source Code) GPL-2.0C
Podman - Daemonless container engine for developing, managing, and running OCI Containers on your Linux System. Containers can either be run as root or in rootless mode. Simply put: alias docker=podman. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Go
grml - Bootable Debian Live CD with powerful CLI tools. (Source Code) GPL-3.0Shell
mitmproxy - A Python tool used for intercepting, viewing and modifying network traffic. Invaluable in troubleshooting certain problems. (Source Code) MITPython
mtr - Network utility that combines traceroute and ping. (Source Code) GPL-2.0C
Sysdig - Capture system state and activity from a running Linux instance, then save, filter and analyze. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Docker/Lua/C
Darcs - Cross-platform version control system, like git, mercurial or svn but with a very different approach: focus on changes rather than snapshots. (Source Code) GPL-2.0Haskell
Fossil - Distributed version control with built-in wiki and bug tracking. (Source Code) BSD-2-ClauseC
Git - Distributed revision control and source code management (SCM) with an emphasis on speed. (Source Code) GPL-2.0C
Mercurial - Distributed source control management tool. (Source Code) GPL-2.0Python/C/Rust
DefGuard - True enterprise WireGuard with MFA/2FA and SSO. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Rust
Dockovpn - Out-of-the-box stateless dockerized OpenVPN server which starts in less than 2 seconds. (Source Code) GPL-2.0Docker
Firezone - WireGuard based VPN Server and Firewall. (Source Code) Apache-2.0Docker
Gluetun VPN client - VPN client in a thin Docker container for multiple VPN providers, written in Go, and using OpenVPN or Wireguard, DNS over TLS, with a few proxy servers built-in. MITdocker
Headscale - Self-hostable fork of Tailscale, cross-platform clients, simple to use, built-in (currently experimental) monitoring tools. BSD-3-ClauseGo
Nebula - A scalable p2p VPN with a focus on performance, simplicity and security. MITGo