The document discusses virtual appliances and provides guidance on how to build them. It defines a virtual appliance as software pre-installed on a virtual machine that can run on any hypervisor. It recommends building appliances using version control, continuous integration, and automated testing/deployment in virtual machines. It also covers packaging, security considerations, updating, and configuration management when building virtual appliances.

1. Building (Virtual) Appliances Kris Buytaert

2. Kris Buytaert I used to be a Dev,

3. Then Became an Op

4. Senior Linux and Open Source Consultant @inuits.be

5. „ Infrastructure Architect“

6. Building Virtual Appliances/Clouds since 2004

7. Surviving the 10 th floor test

8. Co-Author Virtualization with Xen

9. Guest Editor at Virtualization.com

10. But mostly, a DevOp

11. Agenda What Is A Virtual Appliance ?

12. Build once, Run Everywhere

13. Why people don't like Virtual Appliances

14. Why Build Virtual Appliances

15. So you are building a Virtual Appliance ?

16. What Is A Virtual Appliance ?

17. Examples:

18. Where to get them ? TurnKey Linux: http://www.turnkeylinux.org/

19. VirtualBox : http://virtualboximages.com/

20. Rpath :

21. LMGTFY

22. the software vendor himselve

23. VMWare : http://www.vmware.com/appliances/

24. Citrix : Announced

25. Build once, Run Everywhere Remember a fellow called Duke in 1996 ?

26. His “VM” just got bigger

27. OVF Open Standard

28. Packaging & Distributing

29. Hypervisor independant

30. Support Multiple VM's in 1 package

31. Defines : CPU, Memory, Network, Storage

32. NOT OVF File Format

33. Conversion between fileformats still needed e.g VMDK to VHD (Xen)

34. But there are some availble

35. OVF in products VirtualBox

36. RHEV as of v2.2 import and export available

37. Citrix Labs : Project Kensho

38. VMWare export tool

39. Why people don't like Virtual Appliances Doesn't fit with their deployment tools

40. Doesn't fit with their authentication infrastructure

41. Doesn't fit with their standard database

42. Doesn't fit with their backup infrastructure

43. Doesn't fit with their operating system of choice

44. Why people don't like Virtual Appliances Security Who did build this device ? What about updates ?

45. Did we mention authentication ?

46. How secure is the application

47. The application servers ?

48. The Firewall ?

49. Image Sprawl, your update nightmare Image sprawl Copy VM, Deploy VM, Modify VM, Copy VM How do you patch 1 VM ?

50. Did you patch before or after that one was copied ?

51. How do you patch 100 VM's ?

52. What about machines that are offline ?

53. Image Sprawl, your update nightmare The biggest challenges we have in virtualization cloud are operational and organizational rather than technical. Christofer Hoff

54. Why Build Virtual Appliances Give customers a no fuzz working platform

55. Save potential customers time by giving them a working demo No wasted time trying to satisfy dependencies Technology Previews

56. Deploy your application on a virtual platform

57. A tool dedicated for virtual platforms (virtual networking, virtual security)

58. So you are building a Virtual Appliance ? What to firewall ? Subnet ?

59. Localhost ? Are you going to build LDAP/??? libraries in ?

60. How secure is the The Firewall ?

61. What about updates ?

62. How to build virtual appliances Rpath (Conary)

63. Suse Studio (Suse)

64. UshareSoft (distro indep)

65. Bitnami (distro indep)

66. But , how do you build your own software / infrastructure ?

67. Your Software should be managed using version control

68. should build using a CI setup

69. should be tested in a test environment

70. Your Build environment should be managed using version control

71. should be automated

72. should be disposable

73. Think deploy a VM , build software, transfer build results, destroy VM

74. Your Test Environment should reproducible

75. should disposable

76. should automated

77. Think deploy a VM , test software, destroy VM

78. Deploying Automated Deployments

79. If my computer can't install it , the installer is borken

80. Reproducable

81. Think: Kickstart, FAI, Preseeding, SystemImager Suite Also in a VM

82. How to Upgrade ? Provide Public Repository Feature upgrades

83. Security upgrades Provide Fresh Images

84. Config Propagation Is this your config or Customer config ?

85. Overwrite customer preferences ?

86. Hosted Cfg Mgmt tools

87. Config Propagation Is this your config or Customer config ?

88. Overwrite customer preferences ?

89. Hosted Cfg Mgmt tools

90. Package & Ship Clocks HW vs Internal

91. Filesystems

92. Firewalls

93. Webmin

94. Vlan support

95. Conclusion Standardize

96. Automate

97. Situation normal, nothing must change

98. Devops

99. ` Kris Buytaert < [email_address] > Further Reading http://www.krisbuytaert.be/blog/ http://www.inuits.be/ http://www.virtualization.com/ http://www.oreillygmt.com/ ? !