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VMware's Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge
Natales writes "VMware has announced that they will be supplying $200,000 in prizes for what they call The Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge. Big industry names such as Tim O'Reilly and Mark Shuttleworth are among the judges." From the article: "Using open source or freely distributable components and/or your own code, create the most inventive and useful virtual appliance and win the $100,000 first prize! The Challenge is open to anyone worldwide and will be judged by a panel of industry experts with input from the community."
windows install with solitaire, for users switching to linux
I call dibs on the first virtual toaster.
:)
Mmmmm, PB&J.
There's nothing in the rules that says the thing has to run under VMware. So send in something that runs under Xen.
One requirement is "royalty-free distribution", so it excludes Microsoft (I bet VMware doesn't mind that).
I'm glad to see that VMware finally got an advertising budget, but looks like they blew it all in one promotion.
I find it highly humorous that the first article posted on /. I read when I boot up Solaris 10 on VMware is an article about VMware and virtual appliances.
Well, I can't say that I knew of him, big name or not, so for those of you who were similarly ignorant, here is a link to his biography.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Write the code to "Dual Boot" windows xp on a new mac-tel. $112,000 and counting.
Virtual Porn Appliance - I await my prize money
I applaud the application of "incentives" to promote enhancements in society. As the prize money is intended, the result should be a change in the way society works, or at least a change in perception. To date such prizes as the X-Prize and the DARPA grand challenge serve quite a compelling purpose... to enhance technolgy.
Examining Open Source Software's track record we see that it has made quite an impact on society; even producing a few "kill apps." But, what I am waiting for is the next paradigm shift or revolution. When will it come? What will it be? Will it involve Open Source Software? Nobody knows the answer to such questions, but I have high hopes that such prize money / incentives are capable of producing the next revolution in technology advancements. If not, lets hope so!
--Matthew Wong
http://www.themindofmatthew.com
1 promotion? So far I'm counting 3:
o Free (as in beer) VMware Player
o Free (as in beer) VMware Server
o $ 200 000 for the Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge
Personnally, I'm glad to see this kind of innovative marketing from them. It falls in the same vein as:
o The Ansari X-Prize
o The Gnome bounties
o The Google summer of code
VMware is driving innovation the same way Google and Apple do. I'm buying as much stock of these cool companies I can put my hands on.
Tuesday, October 12, 2004 : Twelve Step TrustABLE IT : VLSBs in VDNZs From TBAs.
A trust but verify build environment. Using one PC to host a virtual network of locked down servers used to :
1) rebuild source RPMs and other packages.
2) compare the rebuilt binaries to downloaded/existing packages.
3) digitally sign the packages for local install if OK.
Also maybe add a stage 0, running lint and other source checking tools over the source code before build to check for buggy code.
From the challenge rules:
Participant warrants that their entry will not contain any (a) materials that are pornographic, obscene,...
After observing that W32.Mytob didn't run under Windows 95, I read up Symantec's page on it. Appearently, it can figure out if it's running in VMWare, and terminates if it does. I consider that inventive on the writer's part.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
The documentation states you have to be a full time student.
The article and most documentation fails to mention this piece of information.
When you enter, you give up your stuff.
That's a little extreme: if your thing is really good, you might be better off buying appliances (they cost only $150 on up), loading your software onto the thing, and going into business for yourself.
Furthermore, just entering your thing means you are giving it up. You probably won't win, but you'll be giving up.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Ok, color me stupid but I wasn't really sure what a virtual appliance was.
a q.html
http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/challenge/f
Basically a network appliance runing under a virtual machine.
"Written on the pages is the answer to the never ending story..."
Imagine a virtual beowulf cluster in vmware! How much faster would your pc be with 100 virtual CPUs...
from the conditions...
(b) viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs or other computer programming routines related to "hacking" or "cracking" or which damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information
The whole point i use a vmware box for is to test suspect software for such behaviour because it is easely reset and can be simply firewalled and because it really cannot touch te data on my day to day machine.
My virtual appliance submission: A Virtual Space Heater
/dev/urandom >> /dev/null
#cat
Mention that you're a Sith Apprentice. That qualifies as a student right?!
I fail to see how this is anything but free labor in exchange for a chance at a contest prize. VMWare sells the licenses to their software, don't they? This does not exclude them from contributing to open source, but I think they shouldn't dangle carrots out there and hope that random programers will do development for them.
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
The one built-in to vmware is awful.
Few things comes in mind straight off:
Also, the install scripts in linux version could use some work..
Sometimes you might want to reconfigure devices without recompiling the network modules.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
what's a "virtual appliance" ?
Mark is also the owner of the "Bug #1 in Ubuntu" (see https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/1) albeit he seems to make no progress at all. For further reading see article at http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/54009/index.h tml
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
To advance OpenSource forward in the hope it will have an impact on enhancing the society I think it's most important to come to term and start developing TRUE cross-platform development. That means not only building cross-platform but also usable cross-platform by any ordinary user. See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
Serious though, how would you build an appliance that allows the host system to debug the client OS currently loaded, with debugging symbols if available. Sure, I could run the VMWare under a debugger,but its the client OS I would want to debug for things like drivers and kernel level access.
I think the creators of the the Dual Hand Touchscreen would be a perfect entry:
I want a Tor virtual appliance!
That's what I was thinking of also (virtual devices). I've actually done virtual device simulation from a separate virtual machine before. Make that multiple devices, an entire simulated network. So I know what an api to support that might look like and it is not like VMWare's api at all.
From the site:
First Prize $100,000 Second Prize $50,000 Third Prize $25,000 Five Best of Category Prizes -Best Consumer Appliance -Best Developer Appliance -Best Server Appliance -Best Collegiate Appliance * -VMTN Community Choice Appliance $5,000 Each
* Participant must be a full-time student.
See, the one asterix connects to the other asterix...makes sense that a collegiate appliance be written by a student, no?
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1. A virtual samaba server on a windows machine in order to access ext3 / reiserfs partitions on a local hard disk.
2. A virtual browser testbed, multiple virtual machines each running different Browser / OS combos (Linux / Windows / MacOSX), with a script to grab screenshots of each browser and to allow interactive testing of each combo.
3. Cross platform virtual compile farm.
4. A virtualized router / firewall within a server - almost as safe as an external box if it gets cracked.
5. A virtualized DRM media player for redirecting the video/audio data from a virtual monitor/speaker to a virtual digital input.
6. A virtualized testbed for massivly distrabuted systems. Like testing the routing efficency of freenet over a variety of network link speeds.
The value of a computer system model lies not in how well it does specific thing X today, but in how naturally you can program it to do as-yet-unknown thing Y tomorrow; it's easy to write software that meets only your present needs. A set of "virtual appliances," each of which serves some narrow purpose, is just about as bad as one can get.
to offer near guaranteed virus/Spy free environment that can be rapidly turned on/off.
I promote Live-cd's to everyone I know doing on-line banking, stock trading reading business email, and surfing untrusted sites.
I recommend they reboot just prior to using banking and stock trading. This is great but it is time consuming.
So my question is would doing this in a vmware environment be faster and/or better? to offer near guaranteed virus/Spy free environment that can be rapidly turned on/off.
I'd go for a boot'n go SAN machine, or iSCSI SAN host, with built in encryption, and an easy, slick looking web interface ;)
Bingo! Wow, I scored a line in buzzword bingo from just one post! I think this is a new record...
Imagine getting thousands of developers working for you for 3 months for $200k.
Or lets look at it another way. Say 1000 people participate in this. That means if each person was being paid, they would be getting around $2 per day for their work. What is this, India? Only VMware wins here.
Don't get me wrong, I like VMware and have spent a lot on money on them but contests like this always piss me off. Instead of giving a commercial company free work, why not put your effort into something everyone can use? Or at the very least benefits you. Do an open-source project, help an open-source project (Xen maybe, QEMU, Bochs), start your own company or whatever.
Finally, no more having to get up and pee during those LAN parties.
Potentially the ESX stuff would be useful for the servers at work, but its kind of a side issue I wouldn't realistically be able to spend time on, so the "familiarity gap" remains.
:) ?
What would REALLYYYYY interest me is an inexpensive way to run Linux and XP concurrently without the performance penalty of the Host-Guest configuration. A version of ESX limited to only two virtual machines would be ideal. It would definitely have me becoming familiar with that technology.
Also it would make it easier to slide Linux into the organisation, for those few critical Windows-Only-Business-Applications which tend to hold everything back.
And while the ideas are flowing, another useful feature would be having two video cards installed and assigning one to each virtual machine, so both could be displayed at the same time, so I could work on Linux and my low-tech-wife can work on Windows at the same time (until I can wean her off)
anyone at VMWare listening...
I can't believe it, it seems like these people have designed the contest without ever defining what it is they're looking for!! What the hell? I know what an "appliance" generally is, a computer pre-loaded with software for doing a specific task. But what the hell is a "virtual" appliance? An appliance with a virtual machine loaded on? Or a piece of software that pretends to be an appliance? It just doesn't make any sense, practically a non-sequiter. An appliance is something you sell as a physical device, and "virtual" means not having physical form... so WTF are they looking for?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
If you're building an appliance, you control all the code and OSes that go on it, what possible reason would you have for running VMWare? If you need windows code, you just run windows. If you need to run windows and linux code on the same box you're probably doing your development wrong! I mean, maybe you want a windows GUI to run a config program for a unix based system... why not just port your unix stuff to windows? Why not make your GUI web-based? Seriously, I can't think of a single reason to ever do something like this.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
A lot of virus testing at big companies uses VMWare, so a virus killing itself on vmware is a good idea, from the virus' perspective.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I'm sorry. I'm feeling really slow today, so maybe that's why I don't get it. How does one make a virtual application? I mean, isn't the whole point of virtualization is that it emulates a layer of computing so that changes to the applications aren't needed?
I mean, I read the how to and the examples, and it doesn't seem to be any different than from developing on a non-virtual environment. Somebody, please help me make sense of this!
As Seen On TV's? Come back!!!
This is completely incorrect, as others have noted.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
One of the difficulties with this venture is the limited set of hardware VMWare, and virtualization in general, supports. You get basic audio, hard drives, network cards, USB, SCSI, and video which I'll get to in a minute. But most of the open source effort to date focuses on PCI versions of various tools (capture cards) rather than their USB equivalents. And for really odd hardware that you might wish to use to make a useful appliance, you'll probably need to write at least two low level layers for. Perhaps with more time and money VMWare would see contestants take on that hurdle and write some extra hardware interfaces for VMWare.
And now that most major operating systems have fledgeling GPU accelerated interfaces, you can't take advantage of that in VMWare.
Virtualization works well for developing appliances like a m0n0wall router or other tools commonly performed by computers with basic computer components, but I doubt we'll see anything seriously groundbreaking out of this considering the limitations (including the student requirement).
Parent post should be attached to article summary. I had NO clue what was meant by a "virtual appliance" until I read it.
:-P
Now, I understand that a "virtual appliance" is an application that has to be integrated with its own virtualized OS because the real OS is such an unmaintainable heap of shit.
... a freeware version of Akimbi?
Here's what I want to see:
Virtual machine images with no licensing restrictions that can do the following:
- VMs that distribute work that users can do at home and get paid for. It's the next generation of "get paid for working at home" - find work that requires human review like translation, document review, paralegal, coding bounty projects etc - have VM that feeds work into queues and credits users for work done.
- GPS Navigation system suitable for embedded use
- Turn old hardware into a full function dedicated "PDA" which supports multiple input methods. The goal would be a dedicated device that replaces the kitchen calendar for a family.
- Free MMORPEG VMs. - Make future MMORPEG environments rich and full of content and *FREE*
- Internet phone and PBX - a standalone videoconference image that just works out of the box
- A dedicated ebay rich client for realtime auction management that feels more like a real auction
- Gambling devices - real slot machines and card games that feel like being in a casino with real payouts, live stats, etc.
Dude, my blender only cost like $20 at Walmart!
If this sort of "pragmatism" were to prevail, every application would soon have its own idiosyncratic user interface.