A virtual appliance is a virtual machine image designed to run on a virtualization platform (e.g., VirtualBox, Xen, VMware Workstation, Parallels Workstation).
Virtual appliances are a subset of the broader class of software appliances. Installation of a software appliance on a virtual machine creates a virtual appliance. Like software appliances, virtual appliances are intended to eliminate the installation, configuration and maintenance costs associated with running complex stacks of software.
A virtual appliance is not a complete virtual machine platform, but rather a software image containing a software stack designed to run on a virtual machine platform which may be a Type 1 or Type 2 hypervisor. Like a physical computer, a hypervisor is merely a platform for running an operating system environment and does not provide application software itself.
Many virtual appliances provide a Web page user interface to permit their configuration. A virtual appliance is usually built to host a single application; it therefore represents a new way to deploy applications on a network.
Read more about Virtual Appliance: File Formats, Relationship To Grid Computing, Relationship To Infrastructure As A Service Cloud Computing, Relationship To Software As A Service (SaaS), Relationship To WAN Optimization
Famous quotes containing the words virtual and/or appliance:
“Tragedy dramatizes human life as potentiality and fulfillment. Its virtual future, or Destiny, is therefore quite different from that created in comedy. Comic Destiny is Fortune—what the world will bring, and the man will take or miss, encounter or escape; tragic Destiny is what the man brings, and the world will demand of him. That is his Fate.”
—Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985)
“Diseases desperate grown
By desperate appliance are relieved,
Or not at all.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)