I have been working on a side project of developing a Virtual Appliance for Alfresco. My first attempt is here. I have played with several distros (Fedora, openSUSE, Ubuntu, puppylinux, zenserver) trying to figure out the right combination. This first release is based on Ubuntu JeOS as a VMware VM. I need to dig into Kiwi and see if I can build out the same thing with openSUSE. I think that Fedora has a utility to do something similar.
There are lots of things to think about when planning a virtual appliance: size, dependencies, easy of use, what you want end-users to be able to do with the appliance, etc. I have gone back and forth on trade-offs. Initially, I would like to see the appliance as a quick and easy way for someone to evaluate Alfresco. So I stuck with HSQL for the DB. I removed a nice chunk of packages that I would not expect anyone to be using during an evaluation of Alfresco. I think key is keeping them focused. If you are trying to do everything with Alfresco you are bound to get distracted. One of the things that you want with an evaluation is that it just works. While there is a log in prompt, I have the appliance report back, on boot, the most important information they need to try out Alfresco: The URL to access Alfresco. Just point your browser at the URL provided. Everything self-contained.
The VM has Alfresco DM and WCM installed. I haven’t loaded it up with all the cool add-ons, etc. While that would be fun, it takes space, and keeps from the focus: The basic/core functionality of the repository.
I still need to cut down on the size, learn how to better package VMs and make them work under multiple VM managers.
P.S. If you download this and you feel you really need the login credentials and can’t figure them out….let me know I will be glad to send them to you.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Gabriel Gunderson // Nov 13, 2007 at 7:00 pm
You should check out rPAth (if you haven’t already). It’s very cool stuff and you can cook up all kinds of slick appliances.
2 jottley // Nov 13, 2007 at 7:13 pm
I forgot about that rPath. I did try it and I do like it. I just need to learn how to build packages for rPath. My boss has an affinity for Ubuntu and wanted to see something with Ubuntu. I’ll work through the kinks of this one and then go back to rPath.
I think the market is still open here. I don’t think that I have seen anyone take a dominate role yet. It makes it a pretty exciting place to play in.
Jumpbox is another player. They are currently beta testing an Alfresco appliance. I like what they are doing.
3 Matthew (msw) Wilson // Nov 13, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Let us know in #conary on freenode if you need any packaging help.
4 It’s fun to see the places your blog turns up in search engine results // Nov 20, 2007 at 11:10 pm
[...] was “jeos initramfs“. At first glance, I thought it was because of my post about building a virtual appliance, but as it turned out, they all went to my post about opportunities to help the Alfresco project by [...]
5 Tristan Rhodes // Nov 27, 2007 at 9:24 pm
I have been looking for an updated Alfresco appliance (the vmware one is quite outdated). Please keep posting your progress on this.
Do you have any documentation pages, perhaps a wiki for this project?
Thanks!
Tristan
6 jottley // Nov 29, 2007 at 1:09 am
I’ll have a parallels version of the appliance ready this week.
I will throw together some documentation on a wiki and put the scripts that I wrote in my svn repo as well as links to them from the blog as well.
One thing I need to correct this week with the images is that the Alfresco instance has already been started, which started the trial license count down. I need to put up a clean version of Alfresco in the appliance.
7 Alfresco Appliance 2.1.2 // Apr 10, 2008 at 4:36 pm
[...] is based on my previous work using Ubuntu Jeos. (I am, however, keen to try out LimeJeos based on [...]
8 Lessons learned in Appliance building, Ideas for the Future // Apr 11, 2008 at 6:13 am
[...] of what I write here refers back to when I original put together, the first version of the appliance. Some is from revisiting it for [...]
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