A New Way to Deploy Applications

One of the most time consuming tasks for any IT manager today is installing
and configuring applications. First the OS has to be installed, tuned,
tightened, and secured. Then all the pre-requisites for the application have to
be met, like installing all service packs, or maybe setting up a database, etc.
Finally, the application is installed, and then you get on with configuring it
for your organization's requirement. What if you didn't have to worry about
any of this? What if you could straightaway get on with configuring the
application? This is the promise being made by a new genre of software called
virtual appliances. In these, the application and OS it runs on are bundled
together. So you just have to drop the virtual appliance on a virtualization
software from VMware, Microsoft, Xen, etc. and it's ready to go.

Anil Chopra, Associate Editor

While this concept sounds very powerful, and it could indeed significantly
change the way applications are distributed and installed, you can't afford to
be blinded by its benefits. As they all say, you must also read the fine print.
For instance, currently there are no open standards available for virtual
appliances. While VMware and Microsoft have released their virtual disk formats
in public, they've not been submitted to a standards body to create a common
spec. There isn't even a standards body available for it yet. Despite that,
the movement is so powerful that lots of virtual appliances are available for
download. Most of the virtual appliances today are based on an Open Source OS,
so you save the cost of OS and its licensing. However, you do have to pay for
the licenses of the virtualization software that the virtual appliances will run
on.

Vendor support comes next. Would the virtual appliance vendor be able to
provide you support for the OS and the application? If there's a critical
patch out for the OS, then would the vendor provide it for you? Ideally, as the
application and OS become one package, the software vendor must provide you with
all the patches and updates. However, you need to be sure of this in the
beginning itself.

Since most virtual appliances today are available on some variant of Linux,
BSD, etc, you can save yourself from the hassles of installing Linux and Linux
based applications. On the other hand, there's a huge chunk of Windows based
applications users that get left out. Hopefully this will also get resolved now that
Microsoft is working with ket ISVs to create appliances on its VHD (Virtual Hard
Disk) format. It has also announced its own virtual appliances for Exchange and
SQL Server.

Despite all the catches, it's a hot area. The ecosystem around virtual
appliances is still building up, and will take some time before they're the
rage.