Thursday, April 26, 2012

Virtualization appliances

I've used virtualization appliances in the past, and I've rediscovered my love for them again. The folks at Turnkey Linux have a bunch of appliances that I've been playing with to evaluate various open source software packages, including Wordpress, Redmine, and others. I've found that they work on VirtualBox, VMware, and Hyper-V with very little tweaking. For use with Hyper-V, a .vmdk to .vhd conversion was required. Also, I had to use a Legacy Network Adapter, which is easily changed in the Settings section. The most appealing part of these appliances is that I can demo a solution with very little effort. I can set it up and customize it to a real world scenario for a business. And in most cases, if the solution is approved/accepted, I simply add an A record for easy access by employees. Backup and snapshots are a snap.