[Kolab-devel] VMWare appliance

[Bernhard Reiter]

Hi Stephan,

Am Montag, 27. März 2006 13:15 schrieb Stephan Buys:
> I've been quiet for a very long time, following in the shadows. Hope all is
> still well with everyone that knows me.
>
> As a part of my new responsibilities I've been playing with VMWare
> appliances and I cant help but think that this is a great way to easily
> deploy Kolab for small and medium businesses.

Yes, VMware is nice, but unfortunately it is still proprietary software.
This is why we use XEN on the server side.
A contender for testing clients could be qemu (which is partly Free Software).

> There is even some VMWare prizes up for grabs for people who create cool
> appliances, maybe this is something that the consortium should consider?

Is any price substaintial? Usually a contest means:  A lot of work which does 
not get payed. ;)

> Basically the essentials are:
>
> 1) VMWare Player is free on both Windows and Linux (this makes deploying a
> server really easy even in a Windows environment)

Unfortunately you only get a limited gratis license, the source code is still 
unfree as far as I know. 

> 2) A minimal debian-based VM could be created for download (should be about
> 250MB with Kolab installed)
> 3) A great reference for troubleshooting
> 4) Multiple VMs can be deployed easily (distributed Kolab environment)
> 5) A "ready for bootstrap" image could be distributed that prompts the user
> for the essentials the first time the VM is started.
> 6) VMWare Server is also free, this is a credible way to deploy servers
> used by many large companies.

Same here.

> 7) The VM could be Uniprocessor or SMP
>
> What do you think?
> I might even be able to scrape some time together to assist.

If anybody wants to create it: It would be cool to have.
It is not my personal top priority, though.
For production use, I would not go for vmware on the server as it would add 
another layer of potential problems.

Bernhard