Virtual appliances vital
VMware Marketplace is an important
piece of the virtualization puzzle
CAMERON STURDEVANT
n the first of a series of reviews I’m writ- environment. Toactuallydeployproduction-levelver-
ing about VMware vSphere 4, I focused on sionsof theseproducts—which rangefrom firewalls
important new features such as the vNetwork and intrusion detection systems to capacity planning
Distributed Switch and improved manage- and VM performance management tools—you’ll
ment tools (see review, Page 22). have to create your own virtual appliances that are
As a product reviewer, that’s my job—to focus tweaked to work perfectly in your data center.
on the product. But as an industry analyst, one of Installing your new virtual appliance, will, in most
the big changes at VMware that caught my eye was cases, be much easier because of the DMTF.
the drastic improvements made to the VMware All of the virtual appliances I looked at in the
Marketplace for virtual appliances. VMware marketplace are provided in an OVF (Open
One of the beautiful things about virtualization Virtualization Format) package. In this method, all
is the ability to create virtual appliances that wrap aspects of the virtual machine, or multiple virtual
the operating system, application, disk and other machines running together, are described. This means
configuration choices into a neat, isolated bundle. that the CPU, memory and disk, along with all other
I like virtual appliances virtualhardwarerequirements,
because they significantly are provided with the virtual
‘VIRTUAL APPLIANCES
reduce application installation appliance. With a little practice,
and distribution costs: Because most IT managers will be able
SIGNIF ICANTLY
the virtual appliance is already to deploy virtual appliances in
installed when it gets to you, OVF packages with little or no
REDUCE APPLICATION
you don’t have to go through manual intervention.
INSTALLATION AND
the expensive, one-time step- To keep the marketplace
up process. And thanks to interesting for IT managers,
DISTRIBUTION COSTS.’
some standardization work VMware needs to make sure
that I’ll touch on in a moment, that product offerings are kept
virtualappliances are relatively cheap tomove around up-to-date. Further, it would be nice to see support,
in a virtual data center, even among VMware, Hyper- maintenance, advice and user group links added to
V and Xen-based virtualization environments. each of the products. Even if these links lead off to
The change in the VMware virtual appliance mar- vendor or community-supported sites, it would be
ketplace is twofold. First, it has been integrated into convenient for potential customers to see these service
the vCenter Server interface, which makes it simple links right next to the offered product.
to access the virtual appliances. Second, the market- And it’s not too soon for VMware to add product
place has been almost completely revamped. Links lifecycle management to the marketplace. A “new
to products actually lead to a virtual appliance that products” highlight area for recently added virtual
can be downloaded within the VMware domain. In appliances could be joined by a “staying power” cat-the previous version of the marketplace, I was more egory that features tried-and-true performers. This
often than not taken to dead ends on the appliance kind of product differentiation could be provided
makers’ Websites. For those of you who were soured by a third party. But for premium data center prod-on the idea of exploring virtual appliances, this new ucts, I’d rather get this kind of information from
marketplace should change your attitude. the company that is demonstrating the operational
How about implementation? Virtual appliances ability to make it happen, and that’s VMware. ´
are like starter kits; they are really meant to be used
as a low-cost (to you, the IT manager) way to quickly Technical Director Cameron Sturdevant can be reached
get a taste for what a virtual appliance can do in your at csturdevant@eweek.com.
