Over the weekend, I spent some time playing around with VMware

VMware Studio has been around for some time. In fact, version 1 was released on September 5, 2008. However, there are still a lot of VMware users and software providers that are unfamiliar with this technology. This solution allows developers to create VMware virtual appliances, and vApps (multiple virtual appliances combined as a unit) using this free authoring tool. A cool feature of this utility, is the ability to convert existing Linux and Windows virtual machines in to the OVF format. For more information on this tool, check out the website: <a title="http://www.vmware.com/products/studio/overview.html" href="http://www.vmware.com/products/studio/overview.html">http://www.vmware.com/products/studio/overview.html</a>

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While browsing through VMware's vast collection of available products on their website, I stumbled upon a new webpage dedicated for the purchase and download of VMware Virtual Appliances.  For those not familiar with this technology, virtual appliances allow VMware users to quickly and easily deploy software and servers by importing a pre-built solution directly into their existing vSphere environment.  VMware has started using virtual appliances at an increasing rate, and other software vendors have picked up this trend.

Now, all of these appliances can be found on a central page by visiting <a title="https://solutionexchange.vmware.com/store/category_groups/virtual-appliances" href="https://solutionexchange.vmware.com/store/category_groups/virtual-appliances">https://solutionexchange.vmware.com/store/category_groups/virtual-appliances</a>. Personally, I am a big fan of using virtual appliances. I think they greatly simplify the deployment of new solution in a virtual environment, and assure that the software has been properly installed and configured.