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.

Comments

What a great idea

[dave562]

It seems like the top three winners are working in the right direction. I setup a virtual machine at home (albeit using Virtual PC) after Symantec kept quarantining all of the fun tools that I wanted to work with. Virtual machines provide a great environment for setting up network tools that might otherwise not get along with applications and services running on a production server.

Re:What a great idea

[dave562]

One such "tool" that would work great on a virtual machine because the host machine rejects it is a virus. With all benefits you get some drawbacks.

Granted. Yet in the case of the host machine identifying a security tool as something that needs to be quarantined, the VM is a great way to go. I can still have my secured OS, and run all of my security tools without having to degrade the security of the host.

Umm... why?

[Valar]

First of all, I had no idea what the article was about from the summary. Once I clicked through however I became even more perplexed, for a different reason.

The idea behind the contest is that you build an application bundle that can be run "out of the box" inside of vmware, with no configuration or installation.

So the question is, if you are going to target your application to a virtual machine, why use vmware? Why wouldn't you use java or python, for example?

Re:Umm... why?

[Aladrin]

'Virtual Machine' and 'Virtual Hardware' are 2 different things. This isn't a VM in that it runs JIT code. It runs an operating system in a virtual environment. VMWare wanted some killer apps for this and so they have sponsored a contest so people will create them.

Re:Umm... why?

[andrewman327]

So the question is, if you are going to target your application to a virtual machine, why use vmware? Why wouldn't you use java or python, for example?

The contest was sponsored by VMware therefore it is only natural that they used their own platform. Look at the domain of TFA.

Re:Umm... why?

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

Re:Umm... why?

[SanityInAnarchy]

I understand the difference, but the apps they show off would be better implemented as single Java or Python apps -- even .NET/mono -- than as a whole OS inside a VMWare machine. I understand why VMWare did the contest the way they did, but the fact is, 99% of the time, you're using VMWare because you have to run two different OSes, not because you want to. For instance, you would run it on a desktop because you're addicted to Linux, but you have that one little Windows app holding you back.

But, even there, virtualization is really a third choice. First choice is a native app, second choice is an emulation layer like Wine or the Linux emulation for BSD, third choice is VMWare. Even on another arch, there are other ways -- qemu can run a single Linux app under a different arch, so qemu+wine can run Windows apps on a Linux arch other than x86/amd64. I'll try that soon on my Powerbook...

So, this is really nothing other than a publicity stunt, unless they had some sort of prize money.

Re:Umm... why?

[simp]

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.

Re:Umm... why?

[Anonymous Coward]

99% of the time, you're using VMWare because you have to run two different OSes, not because you want to. For instance, you would run it on a desktop because you're addicted to Linux, but you have that one little Windows app holding you back.

That may have been the case in the past, but now with VMotion, the advantage for servers is huge. It can simplify backups, isolate failure, and you can upgrade your hardware incrementally without ever having to move your OS/apps to a new box. Even if we didn't use both linux and windows, we would use VMWare at our office for just the windows servers. Running multiple OSes is still a good reason too, but I question your 99%.

Re:Umm... why?

[Anonymous Coward]

but the fact is, 99% of the time, you're using VMWare because you have to run two different OSes

Maybe in your world but that is a small part of what using virtualization is about. You are looking at things from a desktop and software view, you need to think about virtualization big picture. I am not going to present a powerpoint presentation as I can not give the big picture view in a /. post but, the bigger picture you look at, the more the concept of virtualization makes sense for many uses. It is not for every process, every server, or every company either. Here is a good place to start. Redundancy, load balancing, uptime, ease of upgrading and adding new hardware, monitoring, and automation, reduction in costs to name some of the big reasons.

In our organization, we swapped about 15 3-5years old servers that were no longer under warranty. We replaced them with 3 new physical servers and VMWare ESX. Without VMWare, we would have to either consolidate server processes onto less new machines, or buy 15 new servers (an assload faster then we needed even for a middle of the road server like a HP DL380 G4) and maintain status quo. This whole process of conversion was completed without having to reinstall a single OS or configure any new installs. We used the P2V tools (physical to virtual tools) to convert the existing install base to the virtual servers. We now have complete redundancy for all of our physical hardware which we did not have before AND we bought 12 less servers. The setup required more space on our SAN but less space in the physical servers which is the industry goal with "space consolidation" anyway. Of course we had some older servers that were not moved over to VMWare, they are very IO and memory intensive. They would work in VMWare but we do not want to drag down a whole VM server because of one virtual machines load requirements.

I do not work for a virtualization company so no plugs are intended here. I do realize the industry is going this route and not because everyone else is doing it or because it is the newest buzz word, it just makes good sense in many situations.

Re:Umm... why?

[LurkerXXX]

but the fact is, 99% of the time, you're using VMWare because you have to run two different OSes, not because you want to.

Really? Where exacty did you get this little factoid? Out of your ass maybe?

I want to run VMWare with the same OS a lot.

Sometimes I want to keep the primary OS uncluttered.
Sometimes I'm installing stuff to try that I just want to test and don't want to install on my real machine until I know the software.
Sometimes I'm installing untrusted software (something off bittorrent perhaps).
Sometimes I'm visiting untrusted websites that require IE, and if my host machine is windows I don't want to open it up to possible IE expoits.
Sometimes I'm just trying to keep my individual server apps isolated so that I can move them to different hardware if any of the apps starts getting used more and consume more resources than available on the host computer.

Personally, although I use a number of different OS's, all my machines tend to run more copies of the same OS as the host OS than of a different OS.

Re:Umm... why?

[SanityInAnarchy]

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.

For the future

[bazald]

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.

Re:For the future

[Red Flayer]

If archival is the purpose, then post as AC.

Take your app + VMware = winner?

[Duncan3]

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!

Re:Take your app + VMware = winner?

[Kadin2048]

Well some of them might, if you had a Linux machine. By encapsulating them inside a minimalist VM image, you can make them run on any host OS. So that even if I'm running Windows, I can run a bunch of Linux network monitoring and debugging tools, without creating a Linux system and installing them. (And configuring, etc.)

If you want to do one of the tasks that one of the VMs perform, and nothing else, downloading and launching a VM is probably a lot easier than downloading a piece of software and installing it. Plus, it doesn't leave crap all over your system or risk compromising your security (as much -- obviously you're still running code, but a VMWare image can be run as a user process, I think).

Plus when you're done, you just shut the VM down and either delete the image or save it for next time.

In effect, what they do could easily be replaced with a bootable CD or DVD image (in fact, I'd be surprised if someone didn't have a VM-to-BootCD converter), with the advantage as a VM that you don't need to take down a running system in order to run them.

Plus, adding a minimalist OS like LEAF only adds 3MB or so to the program binaries, apparently -- and I don't think that the VM image format overhead is that much more than a comparable disk-image format (ISO). The downsides are less than you're making them out to be, and the convenience factors are definitely in their favor.

Does it make sense for every application to come with an entire default-install of CentOS? Certainly not; but might it be worth the overhead for some specialized, configuration-intensive application to come with its own preconfigured OS? Definitely. There are a lot of people who are capable of running a VM, who don't have the ability or the interest to set up something like Apache2/modPHP/Perl, Smoothwall, or Squid themselves. (All of which I've seen or heard talked about as VMs.) To be able to just download and run something, and have it act like a distinct server on their network? That's pretty slick.

No, it's useful.

[Kadin2048]

Actually I think it's a Good Thing to always have somebody copy/paste the article into the discussion, so that it becomes part of the thread's permanent archive.

If you go back and read Slashdot stories from more than a year or two ago (always amusing, I strongly recommend it), most of the links to articles are dead. The only threads where you can really read TFA are the ones where somebody pasted it in as a comment.

You do have a point though, it doesn't really deserve a +5 moderation; as long as the person puts "ARTICLE TEXT" in their subject line (which is also a good thing to do!) it's easy enough to find in the the thread if you want to read it, even if it's down at +1 or +2. The only reason to mod it up would be if somebody posted it AC and you wanted to make sure it was readable to people who browse at +1.

So in general, it's definitely karma-whorish, but on the other hand it's also rather useful...so who cares if people get some free points?

Why virtual machines make sense

[pp]

As a coworker of the winning team, the main reason for doing an appliance version (apart from participating in this contest) was packaging. We actually do have a "native" windows port of the code (using python, pygtk etc.), and it's about 25 MB zipped when containing all the dependancies, of which there is really way too many to ask a random user to install so it all has to be packaged into the same thing, really.

The vmware image is about 72 MB bzip2-compressed which includes a stripped-down Ubuntu, X11 etc. And it runs on Windows, any random Linux distro that might have an old pygtk/cairo/whatnot that doesn't work with our code, OS X (with OS X vmware) out of the box. Nice even if you do lose some performance and run into issues inherent to virtualization (accurate timestamps and promiscuous mode inside the virtual machine are tricky and do have limitations!).

We mostly run and develop it natively ourselves (on FC5 and OS X), yet we run into "AAARGH! How do I get
a new enough Y for OS X to run this" discussions every week or so.

*Phew*

[MECC]

At first glance I thought it read "UNIVAC winners".

*Phew*

VMware corporate communication: Clueless.

[Futurepower(R)]

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