The Rise of Virtual Appliances
Virtual appliances deliver focused services in a lightweight package. With all of the talk around virtualization being large system optimization, why single-purpose machines getting so much attention?
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
The next sound you hear will be the buzz surrounding Virtual Appliances (appliances). However, it isn’t just marketing buzz; this time it’s the real thing. Virtual Appliances are small, specially designed virtual machines that provide a single service or perform a single function. They usually have a significantly smaller operating system footprint than standard virtual machines, a single or very limited number of exposed TCP ports, and a single application. Some appliance examples are mail servers, CMS (Content Management System) servers, web database servers, groupware servers, intrusion detection systems, and dozens more. They provide these focused services in a lightweight and often free package.
So, why all the fuss over small, single-purpose virtual machines? Haven’t we been using these for years? Yes, in fact, we have been using them for years but the difference is that now there are commercial vendors who supply them, support them, and update them as…
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