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A New Way to Deploy Applications

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

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.

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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.

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