With Oracle Enterprise Linux JeOS (Just Enough OS) — a secure, minimized OS that is freely re-distributable and backed by enterprise-class support — developers and ISVs can now easily build Oracle VM Templates.
The JumpBox Open Collection currently has free VMs of Joomla and Movable Type and many more under subscription
Just noticed an interesting quirk with VMWare Server and hyper threading CPUs
I told my VM to use 1 CPU but CentOS 4 install detected the underlying hardware CPU had hyper threading so installed the SMP kernel !
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.9-67.0.15.ELsmp #1 SMP Thu May 8 10:52:19 EDT 2008 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
as opposed to creating a VM where underlying hardware didn’t have hyper threading where CentOS 4 install just installed the basic kernel !
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.9-67.0.15.EL #1 Thu May 8 10:39:19 EDT 2008 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
According to www.rpath.com/rbuilder/search there are now over 9,800 rPath based projects so it shouldn’t be long before there are over 10,000 software appliance virtual machines that you could choose between and run on Parallels or Xen or most other virtualisation platforms !
Apparently there is a problem in the kernel used in Red Hat RHEL 4&5, CentOS 4&5, OEL 4&5, SUSE, Ubuntu 7 and other GNU/Linux distributions that causes EXT2 EXT3 filesystems that are residing on SANs to randomly go read-only !
However if you are using kernel 2.6.18-53.1.21+ or 2.6.22+ you should be ok !
See Red Hat
See VMware
http://VirtualAppliances.net/downloads/
VirtualAppliances.net appliances feature an upgrade to their base distribution, using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition, which will be supported by Canonical until 2013.
All of the 32 bit Appliances are using Ubuntu JeOS (Just enough Operating System) which provides a kernel optimized for virtual appliance use.
VMware OVF (Open Virtual appliance Format) images are now available for VMware ESX and ESXi in both 32 bit and 64 bit versions.
Using MySQL Enterprise for Amazon EC2, developers can cost-effectively deliver web-scale database applications in the “cloud”, fully backed by the database experts at MySQL.
Amazon EC2 and MySQL are a great fit for organizations that want to reduce the capital expenditures and operating costs required to build out and run their IT infrastructure.
At least VPSLink are already advertising OpenVZ & Xen Ubuntu 8.04 VPS VMs from $8/m !
VPSLink CentOS VPS plans
VPSLink Ubuntu VPS plans
The Google App Engine JumpBox gives you a drop in place system for doing Google App Engine development that’s contained in an isolated environment within a virtual machine.
It runs exactly the same on GNU/Linux, Mac and other OS’s and gives you a development environment that lets you take advantage of great virtualization features like snapshots. It will run from a single download on Parallels Desktop, VMWare, Virtual Iron, Xen Open Source in fully virtualized mode and others.
Jump Box Open is a subscription that grants you one license for every JumpBox in the Open Source Collection for a period of one year. From Content Management Systems (CMS) to Wikis, CRM to Ticket Tracking, there are already JumpBoxes available for many of the most popular Open Source applications.
There are 20 JumpBoxes currently available, with 50 additional expected by the end of 2008.