Virtualization and developers

I think that developers spend way too much time configuring complex middleware stacks and keeping them up to date. Some products are pretty hard to install and have a lot of prereqs to get them working. But, once those products are installed then it's pretty easy to use them. If we could make installing them and updating them easier then life would be better.

Virtualization offers some advantages here. Several people in IBM and IBM services are now using VMware images to get experience using various middleware stacks. Somebody makes a VMware image with the product installed, configured and working and then puts it on an internal FTP server or shared file system. Anyone else that wants it can then just download it and use it. It's very handy for demos or kicking the tires on something.

This saves people a ton of time and they can rapidly get using a product rather than spend a day or two just downloading or installing it. I think it's something customers should do and it really fits a governance strategy. Make VM images of the standard stacks available to developers.

Comments

[Guest]

What about contributing a WebSphere Community Edition virtual appliance to VMWare Virtual Appliance ? http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances

[Billy]

To tell you the truth, I'd like to see all IBM software products available as VM images for download/evaluation by customers. But, it's not up to me, it's up to the lawyers although for CE it should be easier but believe me, after making the trial objectgrid available on the web, even that took a significant effort to get through the system.

It would be cool to download a working portal system or process server rather than go through the normal download/install/download N fixpacks etc.

[Rob]

And how cool would it be to get the WAS, DB2, and MQ products as separate images, run them on the same machine and check compatibility/play around.

[Guest]

(...) Running WebSphere in VMware is now supported by IBM and VMware has collaborated with IBM to create a deployment guide for running WAS under VMware. (...)

http://www.websphere-world.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1721
http://www.vmware.com/wasvm

Are you sure there is so much legal burden to a make Virtual Appliance ? It seems IBM is already committed into it:
"
IBM Software offers pre-installed, fully configured evaluation versions of IBM Workplace Services Express with Red Hat Enterprise Linux Virtual Development Environment, within VMware virtual infrastructure. Download from our VMware Virtual Technology Network.
Additionally, IBM Software, Novell, and VMWare are teaming to offer pre-configured DB2 Universal Database for Linux on VMware Workstation.
"
http://www.vmware.com/partners/alliances/technology/ibm.html

[Billy]

Yep
It took several months to work through the legal stuff for the eval version of the ObjectGrid and thats straight forward compared with a VM with software from multiple vendors inside it. Once you do it once then it's not so bad but the first time is the problem.

[Guest]

Seems things are improving on this field. WAS v7 Beta is available in the form of a VMware image.

https://www14.software.ibm.com/iwm/web/cc/earlyprograms/websphere/wasndv7/download.shtml