[CNCF LFX Proposal] Flatcar Container Linux: Nebraska Reporting & Metrics Uplift

### CNCF Project

Flatcar Container Linux

### Term

2026 Term 3 (Sep-Nov)

### Program Name

Nebraska Reporting & Metrics Uplift

### Program Description

Nebraska is Flatcar Container Linux's update server: Flatcar machines periodically check in with it to ask "is there a newer OS version for me?", and Nebraska tracks the fleet's update status and lets operators control how rollouts happen.

This project is a set of four improvements to Nebraska's own reporting and metrics - the dashboards and monitoring numbers operators rely on - each of which stands alone and can be built entirely within the Nebraska stack.

**The four pieces:**

1. **Distribution report** - surfaces information Nebraska already records but never displays, such as which hardware/cloud platform (the "OEM", e.g. AWS, Azure, VMware) each machine runs on. Built end to end as a database query, a backend API endpoint, a chart in the web dashboard, and a monitoring metric.
2. **Faster reporting pages** - speeding up reporting pages that are currently slow, by finding the bottleneck and fixing the underlying database query or index, measured with concrete before/after numbers.
3. **Index cleanup** - cleaning up redundant database indexes that have accumulated over time on frequently-written tables.
4. **Broader monitoring coverage** - broadening Nebraska's monitoring coverage (for example, per-group rollout progress and update failure rates) so operators can watch fleet health in tools like Prometheus and Grafana.

The mentee is not expected to complete all four; the exact selection and order can be settled with the maintainers. A natural place to start is the distribution report - it is small and well-defined, yet touches every layer of the stack (database, API, frontend, metrics), which makes it an ideal way to learn the whole system before taking on the others.

By the end of the term the mentee should have delivered at least one of these pieces end to end, with the option to continue into further pieces as time allows.

### Technologies

SQL, PostgreSQL, Go, REST API, React, TypeScript, Prometheus, Full Stack, databases

### Skills same as Technologies?

- [x] Yes, the required skills are the same as the technologies listed above.

### Required/Desirable Skills

### Mentors

Jan Bronicki | @John15321 | jan.bronicki.flatcar@gmail.com | john15321
Ervin Racz | @ervcz | raczervin@microsoft.com | ervcz

### Upstream Issue URL

https://github.com/flatcar/Flatcar/issues/2239

### Application Prerequisites

- [x] Resume
- [x] Cover Letter
- [ ] School Enrollment Verification
- [ ] Participation Permission from school or employer
- [ ] Coding Challenge
- [ ] Custom Prerequisite (fill in details below)

### Coding Challenge URL

_No response_

### Custom Prerequisite Name

_No response_

### Custom Prerequisite Description

_No response_

### Custom Prerequisite — File Upload

- [x] Yes — completion of this task requires the mentee to submit a file.

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**LFX program:** [CNCF - Flatcar Container Linux: Nebraska Reporting & Metrics Uplift (2026 Term 3)](https://mentorship.lfx.linuxfoundation.org/project/7be547a2-488d-493f-ab5b-a0ad32fa17d9)

Start with the upstream Flatcar issue #2239 and the Nebraska project context; no implementation files or tests are named here. Discuss with the listed maintainers which standalone piece to select, then define completion around delivering that piece end to end, with measured results or monitoring coverage as applicable.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.