Creating Vmware appliances (the easy and free way)
I’ve used VMWare server, VMWare Workstation, and VMWare fusion (Mac OS X desktop client). Recently I’ve been thinking about creating my own VMWare appliance as a development environment for a project.
After some initial research I realized there was nothing special about so called “Appliances” they are just like the VMWare instances I was already used to creating — except that they are meant for other people.
The easiest way to get started is with the help of a website called “EasyVMX” is a simple web-application that creates the .vmx configuration file for your VMWare appliance. It’s fairly straight forward, and you can specify if you want the appliance to use an ISO image or physical CDROM (two of the most typical install sources).
Once you’ve filled out the form, you can then launch it with the free VMWare player. Make sure your installation source (ISO or CD) is in place (right path to file, media in drive…etc) — and there you have it, you’ve started creating your vmware appliance for free.
You could always sign up for a free 30 day trial of VMWare workstation, but unless you are ready to fork over $180 you would end up moving to VMWare player anyway — might as well start there.
Filed under: Virtualization