VMware Server 2 - Part 2 - Application Virtual Machines

Application Virtual Machines For the people who want a virtual machine up and running without hassles, there are application virtual machines which can be installed within a few minutes. A variety of pre-packaged applications are available. In fact, far too many to mention here. A good resource for application VMs is the VMware appliance marketplace: http://www.vmware.com/appliances

Installing an Application VM

For this example, I am using the SugarCRM application from Bitnami. It is a free download from their website:
http://bitnami.org/stack/sugarcrm.

This test uses the OpenSUSE 11.1 version for the installation.

cd /vmware/test  (or your own datastore)

wget http://bitnami.org/files/stacks/sugarcrm/6.0.0-0/bitnami-sugarcrm-6.0.0-0-opensuse-11.1.zip

unzip bitnami-sugarcrm-6.0.0-0-opensuse-11.1.zip

All ready and done, with the vmdk files in the pre-set-up datastore.

Now to install the application VM into the VMware server.


Setting up the VM 

There is only a few things that are done differently when installing an application virtual machine. (Click the images for larger versions of the examples).

As with creating a VM in part-1, you select the datastore you want to use and the VM's name.

For this example, the test datastore will be used again for the VM files.

On the next screen of the wizard, the correct OS for the application VM needs to be selected for the application to work.

In this case, the selection is SUSE Linux. This will suit the SugarCRM application requirements.

Moving on to the most important part in the wizard.

This time, instead of creating a new disk, to run the application VM, the image can be selected by "Use an Existing Virtual Disk" option.

This will give the ability to browse the datastores for the downloaded vmdk files.

Browse to the correct datastore and select the SugarCRM vmdk file for SUSE Linux.

Then after pressing the OK button, the drive configuration screen will appear again with the application VM in the browse field.

For the rest of the installation of the application virtual machine, the configuration wizard follows the same path as installing VMs in part-1 of this blog.

To start the application VM, go to the console tab and click on the play icon.

Once started, click the console screen again to launch the application VM display to gain access to the virtual machine.

Now there is a nice copy of SugarCRM running on the VMware Server.

All ready for set-up and deployment by Internet to a client's office VPN or for a personal CRM software system for in-house work.

And all installed in under 5 minutes.

But wait, there is more to come in "VWware Server 2 - parts 3 and 4" of the blog.

I talk about mounting ISO images and clustering the VMware server, among other things VM technical.

Stay tuned...