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TurnKey Linux Virtual Appliance Library. A Little Virtual Machine Recreation. It's time for a little VM recreation and you don't even have to get sweaty in the process. You’ve just scheduled a week of vacation in a remote location near some sand, water and a wee dram of your favorite beverage. Your backup feels confident that he can handle the situation while you’re gone but just before you walk out that door; you pick up your phone to hear a hysterical voice on the other end explaining that the accounting department VM crashed and now it won’t start up. You discover that the vmdk file that describes your VM’s disks has corrupted itself and isn’t repairable.

Nothing makes your palms clammy as fast as a corrupted virtual machine (VM) but if you have a clean pair of sweat bands or a towel handy, you’ll survive it I promise. Don’t let the air out of your favorite floatation device just yet. There’s hope for your VM and your vacation. You can recreate those corrupted VMDK disk descriptor files with little effort and no sweat. Anatomy VMDK File Recreation. What’s GNU in Virtualization. Taking a new operating system for a spin is easier than ever before with virtualization software but when that software is free, it’s even better. There are virtualization choices for all tastes listed here. For those of you who prefer hypervisor-based virtualization, I urge you to try Xen or Proxmox. If you’re into high performance, container-based OpenVZ wins the prize. Red Hat’s enterprise-level virtualization solution, KVM, delivers incredible performance for a full virtualization solution.

And, for you desktop-level virtualization converts, VirtualBox dishes out performance and a gaggle of high-end features. All virtualization software in this week’s article is released under the GPL-specifically GPL version 2. The Kernel Virtual Machine is a full virtual machine (VM) solution for Linux-based hosts. Virtually GNU Choices OpenVZ OpenVZ is container-based virtualization, which is analogous to BSD jails or chroot environments. ProxMox VirtualBox Xen.

Which Major Hypervisor is Cheaper? Does it Matter? The search for the answer to this ultimate question is a noble yet daunting quest. Licensing obfuscation makes the answer the stuff of Sherlock Holmes novels and fortuneteller quarry. A direct comparison seems nearly impossible among the Big Three (VMware, Citrix and Microsoft) hypervisor vendors but you’ll find many failed and frustrated attempts sprinkled throughout the Internet on this very subject.

Why is hypervisor comparison pricing such an occult subject when, in fact, it should be very simple? You shouldn’t need to consult a crystal ball, a psychic, Underdog, Mr. Peabody or a curmudgeonly magazine columnist to find the answer—notice that I said “shouldn’t.” What makes a neat and direct comparison nearly impossible is that you’re asking to draw a comparison between such distantly related items as Christmas ornaments and Horse-apples. You might be wondering if there’s really that much disparity between hypervisor technologies. VMware VMware isn’t cheap. Citrix. OVF to VM and Back Again. Do you need to deliver your appliances in smaller packages or do you have an OVF and don't know how to use it? This how-to unravels the OVF mystery.

The Open Virtualization Format (OVF) is a virtual machine standard that provides a flexible, secure, portable and efficient way to package and distribute virtual machines. While often referring to virtual appliances, you can package any virtual machine in OVF and distribute it. The OVF file is an XML file that describes a virtual machine and its configuration. So, what’s so great about OVF? Since there are so many disparate points of view in the virtualization world, a proposal was made that there should be a way to standardize virtual machine delivery in a hypervisor agnostic fashion. In 2008, the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) drafted the OVF Specification V1.0.0.

Download and Install Point your browser to OVF Tool Download and download the tool for your operating system (Windows or Linux). Using ovfTool # . # . Deploying OVF # . How to Develop Virtual Appliances Using Ubuntu JeOS. Ubuntu JeOS (pronounced" juice") is an efficient variant of the Ubuntu Server operating system, configured specifically for virtual appliances. Soren Hansen and Nick Barcet discuss how to use JeOS to create your own virtual appliance to help distribute your applications. Virtual appliances are an effective and convenient way to distribute applications, whether it’s an open source application stack or a commercial product.

Users and customers can simply fire up the virtual machine and start using the application, without having to deal with the installation and configuration that goes along with it. Ubuntu JeOS (pronounced” juice”) is an efficient variant of the Ubuntu Server operating system, configured specifically for virtual appliances. JeOS is a specialized installation of Ubuntu Server Edition with a tuned kernel that only contains the base elements needed to run within a virtualized environment.

Initial setup (VMware Only) Download JeOS Installation of JeOS Defining the VMware machine.