Virtual v’s Physical Appliances – 4 Compelling Reasons for Change
Ease of Evaluation and Testing
In order to evaluate a new appliance, the manufacturer must first ship a sample appliance to the evaluation tester. Once the decision is made to perform the evaluation, arranging for a sample appliance can often take on the order of two weeks before the appliance is available for testing. On completion of the evaluation, the sample appliance must then be shipped back to the manufacturer. Even in the event that the appliance is purchased, generally a new appliance will need to be shipped as the sample appliance will be "shop soiled" and unavailable for sale. Further to this, often it is a requirement of evaluation that the appliance be tested within the data centre or at a remote geographic location. This adds further difficulties in installing and performing the evaluation as the tester must arrange for the appliance to be further delivered to the data centre and installed.
Virtual appliances allow the user to load the virtualized image onto an existing server or desktop and begin evaluation and testing immediately. On completing the evaluation, the administrator or evaluator can simply remove the virtual image and the system is restored to its original state.
