Back in June 2005, VMware launched their VMware Technology Network (VMTN) and also introduced the concept of what we now know as Virtual Appliances. If you aren't familiar with virtual appliances, they are basically a pre-configured and ready-to-run software application that is packaged with an operating system and contained within a virtual machine. By creating a ready-to-run virtual machine, complex applications or complex setups can be pre-configured, and then distributed to those individuals or companies that need to run it. By doing so, the installation and setup becomes as simple as turning on a virtual machine.

When VMware launched the free VMware Player, virtual appliances became even more useful and wide-spread. Now, someone can create a complex software package into a virtual machine, distribute it, and it can then be launched and used within a royalty-free virtualization platform. Now, a virtual appliance can be both a time and cost-saving tool.

On February 27, 2006, VMware had a great idea to help foster adoption and excitement around the creation of virtual appliances. The company decided to come up with a challenge, calling it the "Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge", where contestants would be tasked with building an innovative and useful virtual machine appliance that would be judged by peers and an esteemed panel of judges.

Since that initial challenge was laid down, more than 170 appliances were submitted for judging. And now, after nearly 75,000 downloads later, the virtualization community and the judges have selected the winners.

First prize was awarded to Mikko Hiltunen, Erno Kuusela, Joachim Viide, Mika Seppanen and Jani Kenttala of Oulu, Finland, for creating HowNetWorks. HowNetWorks is an always-on, all-in-one, personal network troubleshooting console for those tired of the "laborious work" of network debugging. No more writing complicated sniffer filters, no more searching for ways to reproduce failures. HowNetWorks takes the next step in sniffer evolution–simply fetch the relevant data and throw it to your favorite analyzer.

Second prize was awarded to Andrew Macdonell, Michael Closson, Paul Nalos and Paul Lu of Edmonton, Alberta, for creating the Trellis NAS Bridge Appliance. The Trellis NAS Bridge Appliance makes it simple to access files across the network regardless of location, operating system or type of file sharing technology (SSH, NFS, SMB, etc.). It simplifies file access while maintaining security.

Third prize was awarded to Michael C. Jett of Senath, Mo., and Kennieth A. Goodwin of Paragould, Ark., for creating Sieve Firewall. Sieve Firewall makes it easy for Windows users to set up and use a transparent bridging firewall without having to learn Linux. The virtual appliance is managed by a Windows GUI application. The resulting XML configuration files are loaded to the Sieve Firewall virtual appliance and filtering can be up and running in minutes. Because the firewall is completely invisible to the outside world, it is not vulnerable to attacks that target more traditional firewalls. Not only can this appliance be used to create safe home networks, it can be used to manage and prioritize traffic in a multi-department, complex business network.

In addition to the top three winners, VMware selected virtual appliances that demonstrated excellence in five categories:

Collegiate: Open Network Registrar by Zachary Colgan of Potsdam, N.Y., is a drop-in administration tool that simplifies the simultaneous administration of BIND and DHCP.

Community: Hermes Memcached Virtual Appliance by Prabhakar Chaganti of Alpharetta, Ga., is a high-performance, distributed memory, object-caching system that provides a simple and fast caching mechanism to speed up database-driven applications.

Consumer: FreeNAS by Olivier Cochard of Paris, France, is a Web-based NAS server operating system based on FreeBSD 6.1 that provides network-attached storage services such as CIFS, FTP, NFS, SSH, SCP, RSYNC and AFP so users can access storage with a diverse set of protocols.

Developer: eBrainPool by Jatin Golani of Mumbai, India, automatically shares development environments through the P2P eBrainPool network so developers can search for and connect to other shared development environments that are available to the P2P sharing application. With this P2P network of environments it is no longer necessary to have every developer tool and every OS combination because developers can now share environments with others for specific tasks.

Server: Enterprise Encryption Server (EES) by Carl Bourne of Henley on Thames, United Kingdom, is an automated OpenPGP-based data encryption and decryption utility that makes it easy to deploy and manage centralized OpenPGP-compatible encryption resources. Send an unencrypted file to the EES virtual appliance (via FTP or through a shared directory) and it will send back an encrypted version ready to be transmitted securely over the Internet.

I'd like to personally thank all those people who took the time to contribute to this challenge. I downloaded and tried many of your time-saving appliances, and put many of them to work for my own use.

Congratulations to all the individuals and teams that won. Let's continue to explore and innovate!

Posted by David Marshall on August 15, 2006 07:16 AM