Virtualization Daily

Shawn Morel who works for VMWare has posted some thoughts on wrapping his mind around the concept of virtual appliances and what they mean for the future of software development.

I think virtual machines provide an interesting way of viewing how applications should be packaged for consumers and enterprise alike. Imagine if Oracle developed their next database engine tied to a specific kernel that they tuned to meet their needs and then shipped as a VM that could simply be copied onto a SAN and there were barely nothing else to do to get it up and running. Better yet, imagine a game publisher having complete control over the run time environment by compiling a custom system into a VM; no more need to worry about what other cruft is already on the gamer’s system since the game runs inside the VM.

That’s what it’s all about. It’s a big shift though compared to how things are done today. Sys admins are used to controlling the boxes, with appliances the boxes control them selves, or I should say the vendor has much more control over the box. As this distribution model becomes more widespread there certainly could be some resistance from the admins since it alters their role. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for people to finally accept that by giving up some control, they gain so much more power. Management will certainly get it first.