Software Deployment in a Virtual Environment

Question

I'm looking for a way to give out preview or demo versions of our software to our customers as easy as possible.

The software we are currently developing is a pretty big project. It consists of a client environment, an application server, various databases, web services host etc. The project is developed incrementally and we want to ship the bits in intervals of one to two months. The first deliveries will not be used in production. They have the puropse of a demo to encourage the customers to give feedback.

We don't want to put burden on the customers to install and configure the system. All in all we are looking for a way to ease the deployment, installation and configuration pain.

What I thought of was to use a virtualizing technique to preinstall and preconfigure a virtual machine with all components that are neccessary. Our customers just have to mount the virtual image and run the application.

I would like to hear from folks who use this technique. I suppose there are some difficulties as well. Especially, what about licensing issues with the installed OS? Perhaps it is possible to have the virtual machine expire after a certain period of time.

Any experiences out there?

Answer 1

Since you're looking at an entire application stack, you'll need to virtualize the entire server to provide your customers with a realistic demo experience. Thinstall is great for single apps, but not an entire stack....

Microsoft have licensing schemes for this type of situation, since it's only been used for demonstration purposes and not production use a TechNet subscription might just cover you. Give your local Microsoft licensing centre a call to discuss, unlike the offshore support teams they're really helpful and friendly.

For running the 'stack' with the least overhead for your clients, I suggest using VMware. The customers can download the free VMware player, load up the machines (or multiple machines) and get a feel for the system... Microsoft Virtual PC or Virtual Server is going to be a bit more intrusive and not quite the "plug n play" solution that you're looking for.

If you're only looking to ship the application, consider either thinstall or providing Citrix / Terminal services access - customers can remotely login to your own (test) machines and run what they need.

Personally if it's doable, a standalone system would be best - tell your customers install vmware player, then run this app... which launches the various parts of your application stack (maybe off of a DVD) and you've got a fully self contained demo for the marketing guys to pimp out :)