VMware did its part - they threw out the appliance challenge and ponied up a cool $200,000 to make it interesting.

The community then responded by going into hibernation mode while individuals and teams of people started to concoct wild virtualization appliances that would make use of VMware virtualization and software that is licensed for royalty-free distribution. The community then responded by submitting their entries.

Once again, VMware has stepped up and finished the next layer of this challenge - the submitted entries have been uploaded and made available on VMware's VMTN Web site.

The challenge is now in the hands of the community and the esteemed judging panel.

As of this writing, there appear to be a total of 151 appliances available for download. Within that number, the appliances range in size from less than 1MB all the way up to the challenge's maximum size of 2GB. The solutions being offered cover a wide gambit that includes areas such as administration, communication, networking, operating systems, and security.

Some of these entries are already receiving end-user approval. A few of the higher rated appliances include:

• Zabbix Monitoring Solution - All-in-one 24x7 monitoring solution for applications, network and servers.
• X-M0n0wall - All-in-one firewall package upgraded with VMXnet, heartbeat and MUI-control
• AppliaFIX Router - AppliaFIX is an order routing gateway for the securities industry.
• NagiosVMA - NagiosVMA, service, host & network monitoring in 10 minutes.
• Grid-Appliance - Plug-and-play solution capable of building ad-hoc virtual computing farms delivering high-performance computing to end-users.
• Human Genome Browser Appliance - Human Genome Browser Appliance

It's now up to you. So go forth and download, try these appliances out, and then rate them along with your peers to help determine which appliance is deserving of an award. If these aren't your top choices, you need to get out there and vote!

The entire listing of appliances can be found here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 6, 2006 07:11 PM