Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
The contest was sponsored by VMware therefore it is only natural that they used their own platform. Look at the domain of TFA.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
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)
but the fact is, 99% of the time, you're using VMWare because you have to run two different OSes
/. 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.
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
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.