The ZIM farm (zimfarm) is a half-decentralised software solution to build ZIM files efficiently. This means scrapping Web contents, packaging them into a ZIM file and uploading the result to an online ZIM files repository.

The whole zimfarm system works as a task scheduler and is made of two components:

• The dispatcher, the central node, which takes and dispatches zim file generation tasks. It is managed by the openZIM project admin and hosted somewhere on the Internet.

• The workers, task executers, which are hosted by openZIM volunteers in different places around the world through Internet.

To get a new ZIM file the typical workflow is:

1. User submits a new task (to get a specific ZIM file made).
2. Dispatcher enqueues the task.
3. A worker pulls the task.
4. Worker generates the ZIM file and upload it.

Refer to workers to run a worker.

The whole system is built by reusing the best of free software libraries components. The whole ZIM farm solution itself is made available using Docker images.

Actually, we use even more Docker images, as the ZIM file are produced in dedicated custom Docker images the worker has to "invoke" depending of the properties of the task he has to accomplish.