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VMware Announces UVAC Winners
muff1253 writes to tell us VMware yesterday announced the winners of the Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge (UVAC). The contest, which started at the end of February, was designed to test teams on their ability to create a "pre-built, pre-configured, and ready-to-run" application that could be packaged with operating systems in virtual machines.
One point to it that I could imagine is that two years from now, this post will still be here, but TFA might have moved or disappeared entirely.
Insert self-referential sig here.
Just to point out what we (Mike Jett and Kennieth Goodwin - Third Place Winners) did, we built a .NET (Pretty) GUI and basically set it up so that it generates the appropriate configuration files for Shorewall based on what the "Windows" user wants to Throttle/Block/Pass in an infinite (almost) amount of ways. That is then made into an ISO and VMware is used to run the LEAF (Linux Embedded Appliance Firewall - 2.4MB) OS w/Shorewall and the generated configuration files. Windows then has the appropriate Protocol (TCP/IP) "Un-Bound" from the physical NIC and then "Bound" to the VMware Virtual NIC which is, un-beknownst to Windows, the guest virtual machine. The virtual machine has a NIC that is bridged with the physical NIC so that it's connected to the outside world.
Basically it gives you a Windows OS with the Firewall and Security power of a Linux based machine...
Kennieth Goodwin (kenny@skyfinet.com)
It looks like all the winners are just some application that already works just fine, in a VM.
That's great and all, but wouldnt it work EXACTLY the same if you did an "install with defaults" on your normal system?
Just saying, you might save 500MB, or even 900MB of download in some cases. One is only 3MB, wow!
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Welcome to the age of abundance and paranoia.
I want my base OS to stay clean and healthy. I want to test/run/use many different programs, some from sources that I can not trust/will not trust. But these days CPU power is getting cheap and memory is cheap. That is why a virtual machine is usefull. I load a VM with a certain program or set of programs, use it and throw it away when I'm done.
I don't even care that much about runnig two different OSes, most times the OS inside the VM is the same as the host OS.
Actually we are not manipulating anything at all. Just taking a linux box with shorewall like you would if it was stand alone setup.
So, in short, everything is based on what the stack of the packet filtering OS (*NIX) and the standards that it adheres to!
To answer you question about any problems, we are still looking for feedback from the community as far as bugs and what-not go. Also looking for developers. It's been released as Open Source and can be downloaded either from VMware.com or http://sievefirewall.sourceforge.com./
Kennieth Goodwin
kenny@skyfinet.com
The VMware web site often gives the impression that the company employs a lot of people who have no understanding of computers. The announcement has no links to the winners! The web pages don't display well in Firefox. There are numerous other flaws.
If I didn't already know that VMware is a reputable company, I would never buy anything from a company with such a clueless web site. Obviously someone at VMware thinks that non-technical people have something valuable to contribute to a technical company, even though they cannot understand what they are doing.
Winner: HowNetWorks
Second Place: Trellis NAS Bridge Appliance.
Third Place: Sieve Firewall
Redundancy, load balancing, and uptime are all things fairly well done in ways other than virtual machines. Ease of upgrading and adding new hardware -- you just need your software to be hardware-agnostic, which is why I mention .NET/Java. Monitoring and automation of what, exactly, that isn't already done with bash and Nagios?
Reduction in costs is basically saying that some other reason you listed worked. Virtual machines by themselves increase costs by requiring more hardware -- they will never be as fast as native.
Reinstalling OSes shouldn't really be required -- I know we're talking about enterprise, but I haven't really reconfigured the vast majority of my desktop software in something like 6 years and 3 different boxes. When I install a new OS, I copy my old config files over, and tweak things for the new hardware -- the exact same kinds of things I'd have to mess with on the host OS of a virtual machine. Or are you saying you just ran VMWare out-of-the-box on an OEM Windows?
It just makes no sense when for most intents and purposes, you are reinventing things that have existed in Unix for years, if not decades.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!