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Aug. 5, 2009

Overall, Novell's new SUSE Studio Internet-based service for creating software appliances on SUSE Linux has been favorably reviewed by most in the Linux community.

SUSE Studio doesn't offer the breadth of features of rPath's rBuilder, but Novell's new product is still easier to use at appliance creation.

SUSE Studio is designed to build virtual appliances, such as pre-installed hardware-appliances, or "Linux software appliances" (pre-configured Linux server stacks suitable for installation by users on real or virtual commodity hardware).

Recently released from beta, SUSE Studio can produce appliance images in raw disk image, Live CD/DVD iso, VM-Ware, and Xen formats, and there are plans in the works for supporting Amazon's EC-2 format, says the review.

In a recent study of the Linux market released four months ago, IDC touted software appliances as an opportunity for the Linux and open source community. These turnkey software stacks, which combine the operating system, middleware, other infrastructure software components, and in some cases, even application software, are quickly replacing discrete software stacks, said IDC.

SUSE Studio is part of Novell's SUSE Appliance Program, which some in the Linux community describe as an initiative intended to streamline product delivery and maintenance for ISVs by enabling them to bundle their wares with everything required for direct deployment to virtual, physical, or cloud-based infrastructure.

A well known software appliance development program is rPath's rBuilder, which can be used to develop hardware and software appliances, as well as other types of virtual appliances. Digium, for example, tapped rPath's rBuilder for its Asterisk software appliance, an open-source IP PBX (private branch exchange) system.

Ironically, SUSE Linux was until recently the only major distribution supported by rBuilder. Last December, rBuilder added support for Ubuntu and CentOS Linux in addition to SUSE and rPath's own rPath Linux distribution.

Jason Brooks reviewed rBuilder 5.2.1 about a week ago, praising it for its breadth of features and easy development of virtual images. While it was a favorable review overall, Brooks criticized the software for its fairly difficult application configuration and appliance development process.

The rBuilder tool reflects rPath's motto of "Just Enough OS" (JeOS) creating minimal filesystem images particularly suitable for deployment in virtualized environments. The software also feature's rPath's Lifecycle Management Platform, which is aimed at managing application images in virtualized environments, via a web interface.

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SUSE Studio is far easier at appliance creation, writes Brooks, and in fact "handles appliance creation tasks better, by far, than any such tool I've tested." Brooks was able to carry out most customization tasks before ever booting into his custom Linux images, "using the service's excellent Web interface." The software "significantly streamlined the task of locating applications or application versions not available in the default SUSE repositories through integration with the openSUSE Build Service," writes Brooks.

He was particularly excited with SUSE Studio's Test Drive option, which saved download time by enabling him to test his image on the SUSE Studio servers before it was downloaded. "I was also impressed to find that I could pull up a list of any files I modified during my test drive, and add those changes to the appliance image to be applied after another build operation," he writes.

However, SUSE Linux does have its limits, according to Brooks. For example, rBuilder is said to support a broader set of appliance management and deployment tasks, and offers greater Linux distribution support. In addition, SUSE Studio supports fewer virtualization and cloud computing services as deployment targets, and "offers no facilities for directly launching or terminating the virtual instances it creates," writes Brooks.

He almost concludes that most software appliance developers will get by just fine, despite this early version's constraints, and still save themselves a lot of time in the process.

Brooks ends by saying "SUSE Studio could prove very useful for any individual or organization that uses Novell's Linux distributions by easing complex customization tasks."

Source: Novell.

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