Welcome to the inaugural edition of Boxes of Boxes, a bi-monthly virtualization, containerization, and turduckenization column. Given the title and subject matter of this column, and the fact that version 3.14 of GNOME desktop environment has recently shipped, I decided to take a look at the project’s built-in application for running virtual machines: GNOME Boxes. I took GNOME Boxes for a spin on Fedora 21 alpha, which also shipped recently, sporting GNOME 3.14 as its default desktop environment. The GNOME…

Dockermania has been running wild, and it seems as though there’s an advocate for swapping in the containerization technology wherever we once turned to virtual machines. While Docker won’t (yet) fit the bill in all of these cases, containers are great for trying out new or updated Web applications on your local machine. via Exploring Web Apps with Docker — Project Atomic.

When compared to dynamic sites based on WordPress or Drupal, staticly generated blog and Web sites (like this one) can go a long way toward simplifying deployment and maintenance. There’s no database or server-side code to maintain, and, when paired with a service like Github or Gitlab, you can accept posts or other contributions from anyone, via pull request. However, while simplifying certain areas, static sites introduce a bit more complexity in other areas. Among the handful of Middleman-based static…

When Project Atomic got off the ground in April, I wrote a blog post about how anyone could Build Your Own Atomic host, based on Fedora 20. Since that time, there have been some changes in the rpm-ostree tooling used to produce these images. What’s more, there’s a new distro on the block, CentOS 7, that you may wish to build into an Atomic host. Part of what’s great about the Atomic model is the way it can apply to…

oVirt’s Hosted Engine feature, introduced in the project’s 3.4 release, enables the open source virtualization system to host its own management server, which means one fewer required machine, and more self-sufficiency for your oVirt installation. While a self-sufficient oVirt installation has been achievable for some time using the project’s “All-in-One” method of running an oVirt virtualization host and management server together on one machine, the Hosted Engine feature allows multiple machines to partake in the hosting duties, eliminating any one…

The application as shipping container metaphor behind the Docker project’s name and logo paints an attractive picture for developers: spawn a container on your local machine, fill it with code, and then ship it off to your far-flung users. While the app is where the action happens, I can’t help but wonder what sort of ships await our containers when they arrive at the dock. No matter how well you’ve crafted or carefully you’ve packed your cargo, your application will…

Last week, the oVirt Project delivered a new version of its open source virtualization management system, complete with a feature I’ve eagerly awaited for the past two years. The feature, called Hosted Engine, enables oVirt admins to host the system’s management server (aka the engine) on one of the virtualization hosts it manages. While oVirt was designed to run across separate management and virtualization hosts, it’s been possible from early on (version 3.0) to hack up a machine to serve…

The CentOS Project is increasing its efforts to empower contributors to produce and collaborate on new CentOS Variants, in which groups of contributors combine the CentOS core with newer or otherwise custom components to suit that group’s needs. Xen4CentOS, which combines CentOS 6 with components from the Xen project and the “longterm maintenance” release of the Linux kernel, is an example of an existing variant project. For more on variants, refer to the CentOS Project site and the CentOS and…

The All-in-One install I detailed in Up and Running with oVirt 3.3 includes everything you need to run virtual machines and get a feel for what oVirt can do, but the downside of the local storage domain type is that it limits you to that single All in One (AIO) node. You can shift your AIO install to a shared storage configuration to invite additional nodes to the party, and oVirt has supported the usual shared storage suspects such as…

The oVirt Project is now putting the finishing touches on version 3.3 of its KVM-based virtualization management platform. The release will be feature-packed, including expanded support for Gluster storage, new integration points for OpenStack’s Neutron networking and Glance image services, and a raft of new extensibility and usability upgrades. oVirt 3.3 also sports an overhauled All-in-One (AIO) setup plugin, which makes it easy to get up and running with oVirt on a single machine to see what oVirt can do…