Dear Incubator Community, My name is *Surafel Temesgen*, and I’d like to introduce a project I've been working on called *"Debo"*—a lightweight, open-source Hadoop cluster management system inspired by Apache Ambari. I'm reaching out to share the motivation, architecture, and current status of the project, and to seek guidance and collaboration from the ASF community regarding its potential future as an ASF project. How Debo Began
As a developer early in my Big Data journey, I became interested in tools for managing distributed computing systems. Apache Ambari came up repeatedly as a notable solution for Hadoop ecosystem management. However, I soon discovered that Ambari was no longer actively maintained and had become harder to access or deploy freely. As an independent developer, these barriers were difficult to overcome. Motivated by the community's need for a more accessible alternative, I began developing *Debo*: a system designed to preserve Ambari’s core strengths—such as service orchestration, cluster health monitoring, and user-friendly dashboards—while being easier to install, understand, and extend. Business Strategy and ASF Alignment Initially, Debo followed a dual-product strategy: - A fully *open-source CLI version*, ideal for developers and sysadmins who prefer terminal interfaces. - A *GUI version*, which was considered for commercial support to help sustain the project. That said, I now understand that the ASF model emphasizes open governance, community-led development, and permissive licensing. I am fully open to realigning Debo’s development strategy to be 100% compatible with ASF values if incubation becomes a viable path. Architecture Overview Debo follows a modular *server-agent architecture*: - *Agents* are passive, awaiting commands from the server (on-demand pull model), reducing network noise and improving predictability. - In *standalone mode*, Debo can run agentless on a single-node cluster—ideal for testing, educational use, or local development. - The *CLI version* supports direct terminal interaction. - The *GUI version* (still under development) enables richer visual dashboards and near real-time monitoring. This flexible architecture allows Debo to scale from single-node deployments to multi-node Hadoop clusters with ease. My Background I bring ~15 years of experience in software development, with a focus on storage engineering and distributed systems. I’ve also contributed to open-source projects like *PostgreSQL*, and I'm passionate about building tools that simplify infrastructure management for developers and data engineers alike. Current Status The initial implementation of Debo is complete and publicly available on GitHub: 👉 *https://github.com/Debo-et/debo-teamwork <https://github.com/Debo-et/debo-teamwork>* I would be grateful for any feedback and support from the ASF community as I consider aligning Debo’s roadmap with ASF principles. In particular, I would appreciate help in the following areas: - *Guidance on ASF practices*: Structuring the project for community development, ASF-compatible licensing, and possibly entering the Incubator. - *Feature feedback*: What capabilities would you like to see in a modern Hadoop cluster manager? - *Design critiques*: Suggestions on architecture, usability, and scalability. - *Testing & QA*: Bug reports and performance feedback are welcome. - *General community support*: Mentorship, discussions, and any ASF-specific advice are deeply appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to review this message. I look forward to your thoughts, feedback, and potentially working with the community to make Debo a robust, community-driven ASF project. Warm regards, *Surafel Temesgen* 🔗 https://github.com/Debo-et/debo-teamwork
