Five virtual appliances useful for business

by Jack Wallen  |  October 30, 2012, 11:45am PDT  |  Image 1 of 10

Lampstack 1

This gallery is also available as an entry in the Five Apps Blog.

The virtual appliance is one of those tools that not a lot of businesses are taking advantage of - though they should be. Not only do virtual appliances make it easy to get a specific system up and running, they allow this to be done in a cost effective and reliable way. Simply download the virtual appliance suited for your virtualization technology, boot it up and you are ready to go. In some cases you can run the appliance continually from the "live" appliance. In other cases you can do a complete virtual installation and have a permanent virtual system. Either way, the road to success is quick and painless.

I have found five virtual appliances perfectly suited for business. Each of them offers a powerful solution to a 'common problem'.

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Five apps

1. Lampstack

Who doesn't need a LAMP server? We're talking Linux Apache MySQL PHP. Although to most the installation of a LAMP server is a no brainer (install Linux and then run a single command to install the rest), some don't want to have to bother getting the operating system installed and then deal with the possibility of dependency issues.

Credit: Images by Jack Wallen for TechRepublic

Lampstack 1 - Image 1 of 10

Jack Wallen

About Jack Wallen

A writer for over 12 years, Jack's primary focus is on the Linux operating system and its effects on the open source and non-open source communities.

Jack Wallen

Jack Wallen

Jack Wallen is an award-winning writer for Techrepublic and Linux.com. As an avid promoter/user of the Linux OS, Jack tries to convert as many users to open source as possible. His current favorite flavor of Linux is Bodhi Linux (a melding of Ubuntu and Enlightenment).

When Jack isn't writing about Linux he is hard at work on his other writing career -- writing about zombies, various killers, super heroes, and just about everything else he can manipulate between the folds of reality. You can find Jack's books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

Outnumbered in his house one male to two females and three humans to six felines, Jack maintains his sanity by riding his mountain bike and working on his next books. For more news about Jack Wallen, visit his website Get Jack'd.