VMware Virtual Appliances

VMware is a company that created a product that allows you to run an operating system within a window on your own computer. An example of VMWare in action is that you can be running Windows XP and in seperate Windows using their own memory and hard drive space you can have a Linux desktop and a Windows 2003 server running at the same time. Very cool software for testing applications and one of the great things about this is the software is very responsive within the application.

Now VMware has come out with a set of “appliances” these appliances are precreated machines that you can download and run within the VMware player or server software which is free or the desktop software which costs money.

VMware had a contest for the best appliances submitted and there is everything available for free download, MYSQL servers, mail servers, Free BSD servers Linux workstations….hmmm… everything except Windows machines. To run Windows in VMware you need to pay for a license.

Try is today at the VMware Virtual Appliances Directory

After downloading the player and installing you simply have to download one of the appliances and unzip to a folder on your C: drive. Once this is done you just have to open the player and go to file and navigate to the Virtual Appliance that you want to load.