VMware vApp Developer Blog

VMware Studio 2.0 is in public Beta and it comes with exciting feature set. While 1.0 release was focused on ISVs building virtual appliances, VMware Studio 2.0 has a broader scope. 

For developers, we introduce VMware Studio 2.0 Eclipse Plugin to provide an integrated dev/test environment using VMs. If you are the architect/lead developer and want to standardize development stack for your team, just create a build profile defining the components of your dev environment and distribute it or the resulting VM within your team. It is definitely better than creating a wiki with guidelines to setup development environments J 

If your application cannot be contained in a single virtual machine, you need a vApp! Simply put, vApps provide container semantics over a group of inter-related VMs. Take any n-tier application: CRM, ERP as an example. Such applications cannot be contained in a single virtual machine, generating a need to manage these virtual machines in the context of each other. By grouping them as a vApp, these VMs can be packaged, distributed, deployed and managed as one unit. vApp also provides a common OVF environment that is shared by contained VMs. And how do I create vApps? Use VMware Studio 2.0! With Studio 2.0 you can build vApps, author the OVF environment, specify startup/shutdown order of VMs and their resource requirements. You can distribute these VMs as a single OVF or OVA package. Learn more about deploying vApps in VC from Rene's blog on vApps 

Another area to touch upon is support for Windows. VMware Studio 2.0 enables building Windows 2003 and 2008 based VMs. This is our first release with Windows support. If you are an IT admin creating an “appliance” for internal distribution or developer standardizing windows based dev environment, give this feature a spin. 

Support for virtual appliances continues from Studio 1.0. Like physical appliances, virtual appliances can be treated as a black box. Think Linksys router, the only interface available to the users being a web console. Bringing the same concept into virtualization world, VMware Studio 1.0 embedded in-guest management framework – VAMI that is web accessible, into resulting appliances. It came with few in-guest services. With VMware Studio 2.0, VAMI is extensible. ISVs can write their custom in-guest services that plugs into this framework. The best way to create your own in-guest service is through “VMware Studio Linux Management Service” Wizard that is part of Eclipse Plugin for Studio. Check out Matt's Coffee talk webinar and demo for more details

Last but not the least, VMware Studio 2.0 enables fast builds. You can provide existing Studio-based VM as input, thereby avoiding building the VM from scratch each time. There is lot more to come in this area in future. We have just scratched the surface, so stay tuned.

To summarize VMware Studio 2.0 Features:

• Build multi-VM vApps with rich metadata
• Build Windows 2003 and 2008 based VMs
• Support for building single VM and multi-VM Virtual Appliances  
• Support for Ubuntu, RHEL, SLES, CentOS, 32 and 64 bit Linux VMs 
• Eclipse Plugin
• Extensible in-guest management framework
• Accept existing Studio-built-VM as Input to build process
• Better OS dependency resolution
• Supports VMware Server 2.0, ESX 3.5 and 4.0, VC 2.5 and 4.0, Workstation 6.5.1 as provisioning engines along with VMware Server 1.0.x from Studio 1.0 
• CLI interface for automation alongwith intuitive web interface

If this sounds exciting, download VMware Studio 2.0 Beta virtual appliance and deploy it in your favorite environment - ESX, WS or VMware Server. Ah and and before leaving, I have to mention this. We have put VMware Studio to a great use within VMware. VMware Studio is integrated it with our official build system and source control system to generate nightly builds of virtual appliances for various products, including VMware Studio 2.0! Talk about eating your own dog food..