The up.time IT Systems Management Blog

Virtual Appliances

June 24th, 2009 Dave Mitchell

I love these things!

VMware’s Virtual Appliance Marketplace (VAM) is like a candy store for we geeks and nerds.  While not quite as robust as say, the iPhone App store, there are hundreds of ready made appliances for hundreds of applications. Pick your solution, download it and run it on your favorite VMware virtualization platform.  Don’t like it?  Simply delete it, nothing to ‘uninstall’.

For those of you who don’t know, a Virtual Appliance is the modern day equivalent of a turn-key application.  The OS, application and any supporting tools are pre-installed and ready to power up.  They save you gobs of time, especially when evaluating a solution. The best part?  Batteries are included, and some assembly is NOT required!  In most cases you don’t need to provision any new virtual hardware, or ask your storage manager for more space on the SAN.  Don’t have a virtualization platform yet? You can download VMware Player, for free, and run the appliance on your desktop.

I know that virtual appliances aren’t that new. they’ve been around for a while now.  I know, “way to be late to the game Mitchell!”, But it’s only recently that VMware has been pushing awareness through their VAM portal, and I’m particularly excited today.  Why?

up.time 5.2 has been appliancized!

the up.time Virtual Appliance is finally here and is a dream come true. Now instead of downloading up.time, making sure you meet all the system requirements, possibly installing a new OS and spending time simply readying yourself for our lighting-fast install, we’ve done it all for you!  Download the appliance and run it. It’s that simple.  Seriously,I fired up the appliance and was ready to play with up.time in about 3 minutes! (excluding download time).

This is a game changer.  No longer are you tied to a platform, or hardware. You can can truly be up and monitoring in minutes. Don’t like it? Go ahead and delete it.  Love it? Move it to a production virtualization platform, like ESX and run with it.

We’re confident that you’ll love it.

Download up.time virtual appliance today and try it free for 30 days.  We’d love to hear what you think (comments please!).

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