Virtual Appliance Marketplace

Features

Collegiate:
Yes

One-line Description:
Download a small appliance, gain fast access to tons of other appliances!

Filename:
nfs_server_master_client.zip

Size Compressed:
300

Allocated Memory:
128, 32, 128

Username:
root

Password:
password

VMware Tools Installed?:
No

Operating System:
Linux 2.6.16.16

Applications:
Linux 2.6.16.16
UnionFS CVS dated May 19th
GVFS .21
VMWare Browser 1.0
PXELINUX (latest for Debian)
NFS-Kernel-Server (latest for Debian)

Description:
------INTRODUCTION-----
Many times, users are only interested in demoing Appliances and really don't want to deal with downloading and extracting huge images. This appliance fixes that problem. This is a three tiered approach to reducing downloads and increasing usage from users. The three individual appliances are the Server, Master, and Client. The only portions required for consumers to download are the Master and the Client which make up only 10 MBs!
Note: The version I am submitting comes with the Browser-Appliance already added to the server.
-----Overview-----
The Server hosts other appliance images via NFS. For example, an administrator could add several appliances (vmdk's) to this appliances configuration file. Upon boot, would run an install script, where they would specify the disk drive used and the name of the appliance. This would install the appliance and make it accessible via the NFS.
The Master acts as a cache, pxe server, dhcp server, and gateway for the client. By caching, we greatly reduce the future transfers required for the images.
Upon booting the Client, they are presented with a list of VM Appliances they can boot (the text is given from the pxe server via the Master who receives the information from the Server). After boot completion, the user is presented the same situation had they booted the image locally.
-----Server Side Run-time-----
This system needs to be run on a network that won't block RPC Calls. Since it will be serving out large files, bandwidth is important as well.
To add more appliances to be served, the disk images need to be added to the VMWare configuration file for the Server. After booting the server, the user needs to execute the command "cd install" and "./install.sh $1 $2", where $1 = the device name of the added image and $2 = a one word name for the new appliance. At the end of execution the new appliance will be available for the Consumer.
Note: the install has only been tested on Debian and Ubuntu distributions, it may need to be changed to support other distributions.
-----Consumer Side Run-time-----
The Master requires a server be listed in the /boot/grub/menu.lst, as of now the statement "server=" is listed. This is where the address of the Server would be listed. This should be added at boot time or /boot/grub/menu.lst should be changed to include the server.
In order to get this working on Linux, a host-only network with no dhcp server must be created. Then what is currently listed as VMNET2 in the configuration files must be changed to the newly created host-only network for both the Client and Master.
-----Building Blocks-----
The Server and Master are based on Debian, however, they have been shrunk down to only 30 MBs! This was done by removing non-essential components. There's no reason the Master and Server need to be keeping track of time or their location!
The default kernel for most appliances does not support NFSBOOT nor UnionFS. This functionality was added to the 2.6.16.16 Linux kernel.
For caching, a locally created NFS proxy named GVFS was used.
-----Licensing-----
All included programs are licensed under GPL.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt

Technical Specifications

Operating System:

Linux 2.6.16.16

VMware Tools installed: No

Size: 300MB

Allocated Memory (RAM): 128

Applications Installed:

Linux 2.6.16.16
UnionFS CVS dated May 19th
GVFS .21
VMWare Browser 1.0
PXELINUX (latest for Debian)
NFS-Kernel-Server (latest for Debian)

Virtual Appliance Account Information