VMware Announces UVAC Winners

muff1253 writes to tell us VMware yesterday announced the winners of the Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge (UVAC). The contest, which started at the end of February, was designed to test teams on their ability to create a "pre-built, pre-configured, and ready-to-run" application that could be packaged with operating systems in virtual machines.

What a great idea

[dave562]

It seems like the top three winners are working in the right direction. I setup a virtual machine at home (albeit using Virtual PC) after Symantec kept quarantining all of the fun tools that I wanted to work with. Virtual machines provide a great environment for setting up network tools that might otherwise not get along with applications and services running on a production server.

Umm... why?

[Valar]

First of all, I had no idea what the article was about from the summary. Once I clicked through however I became even more perplexed, for a different reason.

The idea behind the contest is that you build an application bundle that can be run "out of the box" inside of vmware, with no configuration or installation.

So the question is, if you are going to target your application to a virtual machine, why use vmware? Why wouldn't you use java or python, for example?

Re:Umm... why?

[Aladrin]

'Virtual Machine' and 'Virtual Hardware' are 2 different things. This isn't a VM in that it runs JIT code. It runs an operating system in a virtual environment. VMWare wanted some killer apps for this and so they have sponsored a contest so people will create them.

Re:Umm... why?

[andrewman327]

So the question is, if you are going to target your application to a virtual machine, why use vmware? Why wouldn't you use java or python, for example?

The contest was sponsored by VMware therefore it is only natural that they used their own platform. Look at the domain of TFA.

Re:Umm... why?

[SanityInAnarchy]

I understand the difference, but the apps they show off would be better implemented as single Java or Python apps -- even .NET/mono -- than as a whole OS inside a VMWare machine. I understand why VMWare did the contest the way they did, but the fact is, 99% of the time, you're using VMWare because you have to run two different OSes, not because you want to. For instance, you would run it on a desktop because you're addicted to Linux, but you have that one little Windows app holding you back.

But, even there, virtualization is really a third choice. First choice is a native app, second choice is an emulation layer like Wine or the Linux emulation for BSD, third choice is VMWare. Even on another arch, there are other ways -- qemu can run a single Linux app under a different arch, so qemu+wine can run Windows apps on a Linux arch other than x86/amd64. I'll try that soon on my Powerbook...

So, this is really nothing other than a publicity stunt, unless they had some sort of prize money.

Re:Umm... why?

[LurkerXXX]

but the fact is, 99% of the time, you're using VMWare because you have to run two different OSes, not because you want to.

Really? Where exacty did you get this little factoid? Out of your ass maybe?

I want to run VMWare with the same OS a lot.

Sometimes I want to keep the primary OS uncluttered.
Sometimes I'm installing stuff to try that I just want to test and don't want to install on my real machine until I know the software.
Sometimes I'm installing untrusted software (something off bittorrent perhaps).
Sometimes I'm visiting untrusted websites that require IE, and if my host machine is windows I don't want to open it up to possible IE expoits.
Sometimes I'm just trying to keep my individual server apps isolated so that I can move them to different hardware if any of the apps starts getting used more and consume more resources than available on the host computer.

Personally, although I use a number of different OS's, all my machines tend to run more copies of the same OS as the host OS than of a different OS.

Re:For the future

[Red Flayer]

If archival is the purpose, then post as AC.

No, it's useful.

[Kadin2048]

Actually I think it's a Good Thing to always have somebody copy/paste the article into the discussion, so that it becomes part of the thread's permanent archive.

If you go back and read Slashdot stories from more than a year or two ago (always amusing, I strongly recommend it), most of the links to articles are dead. The only threads where you can really read TFA are the ones where somebody pasted it in as a comment.

You do have a point though, it doesn't really deserve a +5 moderation; as long as the person puts "ARTICLE TEXT" in their subject line (which is also a good thing to do!) it's easy enough to find in the the thread if you want to read it, even if it's down at +1 or +2. The only reason to mod it up would be if somebody posted it AC and you wanted to make sure it was readable to people who browse at +1.

So in general, it's definitely karma-whorish, but on the other hand it's also rather useful...so who cares if people get some free points?

Re:Take your app + VMware = winner?

[Kadin2048]

Well some of them might, if you had a Linux machine. By encapsulating them inside a minimalist VM image, you can make them run on any host OS. So that even if I'm running Windows, I can run a bunch of Linux network monitoring and debugging tools, without creating a Linux system and installing them. (And configuring, etc.)

If you want to do one of the tasks that one of the VMs perform, and nothing else, downloading and launching a VM is probably a lot easier than downloading a piece of software and installing it. Plus, it doesn't leave crap all over your system or risk compromising your security (as much -- obviously you're still running code, but a VMWare image can be run as a user process, I think).

Plus when you're done, you just shut the VM down and either delete the image or save it for next time.

In effect, what they do could easily be replaced with a bootable CD or DVD image (in fact, I'd be surprised if someone didn't have a VM-to-BootCD converter), with the advantage as a VM that you don't need to take down a running system in order to run them.

Plus, adding a minimalist OS like LEAF only adds 3MB or so to the program binaries, apparently -- and I don't think that the VM image format overhead is that much more than a comparable disk-image format (ISO). The downsides are less than you're making them out to be, and the convenience factors are definitely in their favor.

Does it make sense for every application to come with an entire default-install of CentOS? Certainly not; but might it be worth the overhead for some specialized, configuration-intensive application to come with its own preconfigured OS? Definitely. There are a lot of people who are capable of running a VM, who don't have the ability or the interest to set up something like Apache2/modPHP/Perl, Smoothwall, or Squid themselves. (All of which I've seen or heard talked about as VMs.) To be able to just download and run something, and have it act like a distinct server on their network? That's pretty slick.

Re:What a great idea

[dave562]

One such "tool" that would work great on a virtual machine because the host machine rejects it is a virus. With all benefits you get some drawbacks.

Granted. Yet in the case of the host machine identifying a security tool as something that needs to be quarantined, the VM is a great way to go. I can still have my secured OS, and run all of my security tools without having to degrade the security of the host.