Virtual appliance

As explained in Amazon Web Services in Action, Third Edition: An in-depth guide to AWS

A virtual appliance is a virtual-machine image that contains an operating system and preconfigured software.

A virtual appliance is a virtual-machine image containing an operating system and preconfigured software. Starting a VM from the same appliance reproduces the same fixed state, avoiding repeated installation and configuration. section 3.1.1

On AWS, the main ideas are:

• An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is the EC2-specific virtual appliance. section 3.1.1
• An AMI contains a read-only filesystem with the operating system, software, and configuration; its kernel is loaded from an Amazon Kernel Image. section 3.1.1
• AWS, third-party publishers, and the community provide AMIs, including Amazon Linux, other Linux distributions, Windows Server, and software-configured images. section 3.1.1

A virtual appliance contains a template for a virtual machine.

Use the template diagram to visualize how a virtual appliance defines a repeatable virtual machine. section 3.1.1

How Amazon Web Services in Action, Third Edition: An in-depth guide to AWS covers it

How deep it goes

Defines the image, fixed state, AMI filesystem, and kernel boundary, but stops short of detailed image creation procedures.

Examples

Uses Amazon Linux, Linux distributions, Windows Server, and third-party software images as appliance examples.

What you can do after

Apply it via EC2 by launching repeatable virtual machines from an AMI.

How it connects

Connects virtual machines with hypervisors, AMIs, EC2, operating systems, kernels, and Infrastructure as a Service.

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Related concepts

• machine imageincludes · A machine image is a packaged template containing an operating system, software, and configuration used to create or launch computing instances.

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of Amazon Web Services in Action, Third Edition: An in-depth guide to AWS. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.