Previously I have talked a bit about OVF and how great it is for the industry. VMware’s implementation of OVF is called vApp and it’s fully OVF 1.0 compliant. The tool used for creating vApps is called VMware Studio and it can be found here.
The new version of VMware Studio (2.0) is now in beta. One of my favorite features of VMware Studio 2.0 is the Eclipse plug-in. Now developers can develop their apps, test them out locally with VMware Workstation, and then build them into a vApp and inject that vApp directly to a VMware Virtual Infrastructure or vSphere environment or even a VMware powered cloud. The ability to go straight from the development environment through to the cloud from within your IDE is pretty powerful – especially with how popular the cloud is for a development platform. Just another way that VMware is showing its leadership in the cloud space.
Here are some more highlights of VMware Studio 2.0 beta:
- Build vApps and virtual appliances (with in-guest OS and application components) compatible with VMware Infrastructure, VMware vSphere 4.0 and vCloud.
- Use an Eclipse plug-in version in addition to the stand-alone form factor. A Web Console and Command Line Interface are also furnished.
- Ability to accept existing Studio-created VM builds as input
- Support for Windows 2003 and 2008 Server as guest operating systems in addition to major linux distros.
ISV partners:
- Author and build virtual appliances optimized for VMware Infrastructure and VMware vSphere 4.0: Support for OVF 1.0 and 0.9
- Publish patches to update deployed virtual appliances
- Extensible in-guest management framework
- Automatic Dependency resolution (static)
- Support for 32 bit and 64 bit versions of SLES 10.2, RHEL 5.2 and 5.3, CentOS 5.2 and 5.3, Ubuntu 8.0.4.1 as guest operating systems
Studio 2.0 also provides general purpose features enhancements in provisioning and user experience
- VMware ESX Server, VMware ESXi, VMware Server 2.0, 1.0.4, 1.0.5, 1.0.6 and VMware Workstation 6.5.1 enabled as provisioning engines
- Infrastructure enhancements in the GUI and builds
The public Beta is accessible now from http://www.vmware.com/appliances/learn/vmware_studio.html.
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