rPath rBuilder

Citrix’s Open Source “Project Kensho” Tech Preview Now Available Under LGPL

October 14, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Citrix recently announced “Project Kensho,” which would deliver Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) tools that allow independent software vendors (ISVs) and enterprise IT managers to easily create hypervisor-independent, portable enterprise application workloads.

Well, it looks like Citrix just released the first technical preview of project Kensho under the LGPL license.

Because the tools are based on an industry standard schema, customers are ensured a rich ecosystem of options for virtualization. And because of the open-standard format and special licensing features in OVF, customers can seamlessly move their current virtualized workloads to either XenServer or Windows Server 2008, enabling them to distribute virtual workloads to the platform of choice while simultaneously ensuring compliance with the underlying licensing requirements for each virtual appliance.

Citrix also announced a partnership with rPath to build and deliver new virtual appliances by assembling Linux packages “like Lego bricks”. The two are working together to allow rPath’s rBuilder to inject OVF virtual appliances directly into Xen-based cloud computing environments, like Amazon EC2. This collaboration will allow Linux and Windows based OVF appliances created on XenServer, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 to be installed and run in the cloud and managed through their entire lifecycle.

Citrix Systems

rPath Takes rBuilder Technology to Amazon EC2

September 5, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

rPath today announced the beta launch of its rBuilder Appliance Creator and rBuilder Catalog features for the Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (Amazon EC2). When coupled with rPath’s industry leading technology for release management, lifecycle management, and its comprehensive support capability for Linux technology, these new features offer one of the most comprehensive solutions for managing cloud application deployments in the industry. This solution is being offered to developers for Amazon EC2 deployments at no cost via rBuilder Online.

The rBuilder Appliance Creator takes developers through the steps to package a Linux-based application as an Amazon Machine Image. With rBuilder, the on-going maintenance and release management of the application image becomes efficient and elegant. The rBuilder Catalog for Amazon EC2 provides a simple management interface for launching, managing, and retiring application images for Amazon EC2. The dynamic search and catalog capabilities will be familiar to anyone that uses Apple’s iTunes, and this “dynamic playlist” metaphor provides a basis for future management activities directed at large scale catalogs of machine images.

rPath’s High Profile Customers: U.S. Department of Energy and CERN

June 4, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

rPath, which develops a technology aimed to simplify application distribution and management through virtual appliances, today announced that the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) have been using rBuilder to deliver virtual appliances to both scientists’ desktops and computational clouds. The use of rBuilder in these environments is supposed to reduce the effort required to support users and allows researchers to take advantage of underutilized computational resources.

CERN turned to virtual appliances to facilitate the analysis of data created by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments. The complete software environment needed by the LHC applications is assembled by rBuilder and distributed to run as a virtual machine on physicists’ desktops. Virtual appliances provide a consistent application environment for the LHC applications while, at the same time, allowing scientists to use their desktops for analysis, regardless of operating system.

rPath’s other high-profile customer, the DOE, is exploring the concept of using virtual appliances to provide customized environments for scientific applications. Scientific applications are turned into virtual appliances using rPath’s rBuilder. The “Science Clouds” project provides resources capable of hosting multiple scientific appliances using the Globus Virtual Workspaces software. Scientists submit their virtual appliances to any available resource, knowing that the application environment is controlled and isolated from the underlying system. By relying on portable appliances, the scientists can leverage the resources of science clouds, and seamlessly move to commercial providers, such as Amazon’s EC2, when additional resources are needed.

[Source: GridToday]