VMware Virtual Appliances Community
rcardona2k
Immortal
Immortal

VMware Appliance Challenge ideas

I can't possibly implement all of these ideas by the end of May, so I'm freely putting them out there to seed ideas and because I would want all of them! Smiley Happy

I thought these up over lunch today.

N-in-1 Linux Installer Distro Picker[/b]: Package all these Linuxes on a DVD.iso: Open SuSE, Fedora, Darn Small, Puppy, Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, etal. and pick one. It comes up fully configured with VMware Tools and network access.

Blog-in-a-Box[/b]: An Appliance setup to serve up a one of these blogger tools: WordPress, TypePad, LiveJournal, etal. – VM is ready to host at an xSP or at home. Easily portable/expandable/clonable when you hit it big. Smiley Happy

Domain/Site-in-a-Box[/b]: A Wizard sets up whole or parts of a small business domain (LAMP, Forums, SMTP/IMAP/POP3 Services, DNS/DDNS, etc. all (re-)configurable, ready-to-host in an xSP or your own connection.

RemotePC-in-a-box[/b]: Anything/everything you need to securely access work-from-home, home-from-work, or from a Wi-Fi hotspot. Sets up working sets of Appliances that you can connect to from work and gives you reverse remote access at home. Basically a Network Admin's nightmare.

Digital Media Centre-in-a-box[/b]: This Appliance would search your whole home/small business network for DVR lineups, music, photos, videos, software packages, you name it and index them like a search engine.

TrustedPC-in-a-box[/b]: This is an Appliance that uses an ISO to keep read-only security software that scans your systems (like MBSA) and keeps a cryptographic checksum log of critical trusted computing files in small attached VMDK or USB fob. If you re-scan any system later so you can see what’s changed. This is a TripWire-like function but in an Appliance.

VirtualGrid-in-a-box[/b]: Some cool distributed/grid application that scales as it snowballs larger and larger as users download and run it. This would be like a SETI@home or the Great Internet Mersenne Prime search project. Obviously I need to work on the content Smiley Wink plus a screensaver that offers the eye candy to make this viral.

Portable Virtual Desktop/Office[/b]: The smallest working set of applications you need to have a virtual desktop. Whether that's a bunch of games Smiley Wink or some open Office and/or WINE, or every developer tool conceived.

Sorry for the -boxes. What are your ideas?

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24 Replies
AMcCreath
Commander
Commander

Portable dektop gets my vote....! Something small enought for an SD card/ flash reader

:smileygrin:

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dropadrop
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Domain/Site-in-a-Box[/b]

Though I'm scared to think what kind of havoc it could cause in small companies who don't know how to fix potential problems... Still the idea is great.

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SamTzu
Contributor
Contributor

I see some very good ideas here but most of them are unnesseserily comlex.

Simple is good.

I'd like to see stripped down version of monowall's DHCP server.

It has a nice web interface, only 5mb footprint and really works quite well with minimal memory. I have one monowall running for just that.

I'd also like to see similar DNS server. Minimal footprint, minimal memory requirements.

I belive those are the kind of VM's that will be incredibly popular.

One service, one server.

If you DNS server crashes, start a new one, start a dosen new ones.

SamTzu

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Dallas
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I too have joined this quest, but I wonder how much do we have to tell everyone before the idea's are submitted. I mean we all know enough to accomplish the ideas that may be posted here. I would like my idea to remain mine, however bad it may be.

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bac
Expert
Expert

I too have joined this quest, but I wonder how much

do we have to tell everyone before the idea's are

submitted. I mean we all know enough to accomplish

the ideas that may be posted here. I would like my

idea to remain mine, however bad it may be.

I would say how much you share is up to you. If you want your idea to stay secret, just don't tell anyone. Smiley Happy I don't think there's anything in the rules that says otherwise.

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rcardona2k
Immortal
Immortal

Unfortunately the overhead of VMs, even small ones is too great to cobble more than two-to-three on an affordable server. Even if you don't use every service in the Appliance someone out there will want to/need to.

Hence my 'consolidation' of like domain services into one box. I serve several domains and host a few forums over my cablemodem and I think people would want to be able to do this themselves.

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rcardona2k
Immortal
Immortal

I echo Ben's sentiments. In fact you're not even bound to the Challenge's Rules until you register. And it's certainly not a condition of commenting here.

I think if you're going to put in 90 days worth of effort there is a fine balance between gathering 'feature requests' and going at it alone and missing the mark. If someone wants to compete with you at the idea level the implementations are bound to differ.

As to transparency, I would keep the inner most details or source of the secret sauce private until submission time.

If it applied more I would re-post a message from another contest about Greed v. Openness. That prize is even an order of magnitude less and the level of secrecy and accusations are amazingly dumb.

For this Challenge, the rules state people can work in groups/teams so I'm guessing this is where you go find partners to team up with.

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iguy
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

This topic will be more for those who have ideas on things they want but don't have the time or the technical experience to do them. So those out on the forums that are looking for that great idea can take it and do it.

I think those of us, myself included, will not be sharing what virtual appliance we are making for simple reason of.. "its my idea for this contest", but ideas for other things folks want are very welcome.

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ccostan
Contributor
Contributor

I would love to be able to download for free :

On a personal Note :

1) Streaming appliance - A VM that I could fire up and with a web browser, point it at a collection of Media Files (MP3s, MOV, MPG, AVI etc) and have them stream on the web. Many of the conversion programs out there are command line and complex. This VM would be like a filter. Any Media in -> Flash movie out or whatever stream you like.

On a professional Note :

2) VMWare Tools Manager Appliance - VM will autodetect other VMs on the network and query their tool Status and 'push' silent upgrades of Tools to VMs. Web Interface could allow admins to push the installs or automate and schedule the whole thing. Option Email reporting etc..

Carlo

Carlo Costanzo | http://www.VMwareInfo.com | @ccostan
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tysonkey
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I'm adopting the Blog-in-a-Box idea. Smiley Happy

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S31
Contributor
Contributor

I agree 100% - this is the beauty of the virtual world - provided you are using open source you can get away from the idea that every time you install a new (perhaps business critical) app it is a good idea to host it on it's own hardware.

It opens the way for a new way of building your infrastructure - e.g. why just firewall the perimeter?

You need to think about h/w failures but swapping lots of small servers for a small number of high-powered machines you can address this issue and get better performance for your apps.

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Ben_Joyce
Contributor
Contributor

Domain/Site-in-a-box sounds good. It's always been frustrating in the past to not be able to put dynamic, data-driven websites on CDs for distribution. With free distros of Linux (or whatever) and VMWare this seems very dooable!

Ben

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beerse
Contributor
Contributor

The best appliance I can think of is for the users that use a dual-boot system with M$Windows on some partitions one (or more) linux installations on other partitions.

After booted the M$Windows os, provide (one of) the linux installations as a guest.

After booted (one of) the linux os, provide the M$Windows install as a guest.

This sure gives some challanges:

\- filter guest info from lilo or grub installations and create a guest based on that info and use the real partitions to boot.

\- provide a way the guest can boot from 2 sets of hardware. Most os-es have hooks to do so. Otherwise, a kind-of live-P2V can give some aid.

In the past, I have seen ways to create these systems manually, using VMWare workstation.

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tysonkey
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Unfortunately, the only proprietary software that can be included, is the VMware Tools. Other than that, only open-source software is allowed. I think.

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bac
Expert
Expert

Unfortunately, the only proprietary software that can

be included, is the VMware Tools. Other than that,

only open-source software is allowed. I think.

I believe the main requirement is that all the contents of the virtual appliance have to be fully redistributable by VMware. If any of it is your IP, you have to give VMware full license to use and distribute it. Anything else either has to be open source or[/b] has to be fully redistributable.

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Hal_Styli
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I must admit that is a excellent post, some great ideas there.

I'm keen on these ones:-

-N-in-1 Linux Installer Distro Picker

-Blog-in-a-Box

-Domain/Site-in-a-Box

-Portable Virtual Desktop/Office

Some smaller ones I was thinking of include:-

\- a phpBB appliance for hosting forums.

\- a completely open source equivalenet of the BEA appliance, preferably based around tutorials on Java, EJBs, etc.

\- a decent LAMP appliance based around some sort of LAMP tutorial.

\- an AJAX tutorial/dev system.

I think the scope for education and training, at least in the CompSci arena, is very wide!

\- a symbolic maths Appliance perhaps based on Macsyma/Maxima similar to one or more of the tools that comes with the knoppix variant, Quantian: http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.html

Actually, Knoppix, particularly when it is configured to save changes, is a rather good appliance. How about Knoppix configured as a VM? Any advantage over an Iso player? ...Not sure.

-One of interest to those of us who come from the dinosaur era: the Hercules emulator ( http://www.conmicro.cx/hercules/ ) implemented as a VM - would save a lot of configuration.

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jbruelasdgo
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Anyone took the idea of a Linux for Kids Appliance[/b]?

Jose B Ruelas http://aservir.wordpress.com
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tysonkey
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Interesting idea. But if you trust it to 5-6 year-olds, they'll probably destroy it, and make it non-bootable. As I've found on at least 3 Macs that I've had, if put in the control of kids, say to use a Notepad-type application/a basic art package, they'll find a way of deleting critical system files. But seeing as it's Linux, you should be able to fathom something so that only 'trusted' people can use the CLI, and configuration tools, and you'll have to lock the file system down tightly (e.g. restriction of file management to just the user's home folder.

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fizbin
Contributor
Contributor

As I am not a lawyer, I may be reading the license agreement for VM player incorrectly, but wouldn't some VM that hosted fora be unuseable (legally) in VMware player?

As I read it, you're forbidden to allow other people to access the hosted machine; I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I suspect that it covers running a webserver for others to use (including fora), and SMTP/IMAP/POP3 access as well. It certainly covers allowing other people to connect via ssh; that kind of access seems like the main thing it was intended to prevent.

It also sounds like the kind of clause that lends itself to selective enforcement whenever management at IBM decides they feel like enforcing it.

My idea for a virtual appliance also seems doomed to legal limbo/dead ends, but for a totally different reason. Namely, I had the idea that one could package up the best of the recent interactive fiction competition submissions (see ifcomp.org) and present a simple menu that would let anyone play through the games - in the future, the ifcomp.org people could even do this themselves, and integrate it with a tool that let people submit their ratings. Unfortunately, many of the submissions are windows executeables (though they might work with wine, I suppose) but even worse, almost none of the games include clear license terms which would allow them to be redistributed at all.

(By the way, if someone else knows how to make this work, feel free to steal this idea without any attribution at all - consider it abandoned intellectual property, free for the taking)

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