http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_appliance#cite_note-1
What is a Virtual Appliance?
Virtual appliances are 'ready to run' software stacks (made of operating systems and applications) packaged as virtual images that can be deployed easily in cloud infrastructures. A few of the better known virtual appliance vendors are BitNami and JumpBox.
Virtual appliances run on virtual machines (VMs). Each physical machine or server can contain one or more virtual machines. The virtual machine manager is called a hypervisor. There are many types of hypervisors - Xen, KVM, Vmware, VirtualBox.
A virtual appliance is a pre-packaged VM that contains the operating system and the application components. It can be shipped as an OVF (Open Virtualization Format) package that can be easily deployed on various VMware platforms.
Why use Virtual Appliance?
Virtual appliances dramatically reduce the cost of enterprise application deployment by eliminating the need for IT resources required to build, install, configure, secure, and maintain the software stack for each application.
Virtual appliances significantly reduce the time to value for IT departments by providing an "out of the box" application that can be quickly deployed into public, private, or hybrid cloud infrastructures.
What are vApps?
A vApp is a prebuilt software solution consisting of one or more virtual machines (VMs) and applications,
which are potentially operated, maintained and monitored as a unit.
A multi-VM OVF package is called a vApp. For instance, to ship a CRM solution, the vApp can contain the database server VM, application server VM and a web server VM packaged into one unit. The vApp gives application owners a standard way to describe operational policies for an application which the cloud OS can automatically interpret and execute. Therefore, vApps are self-describing to and self-managing on the platform they run. vApps can comprise any applications running on any OS, providing a mechanism to move applications between internal clouds or external clouds while retaining the same service levels. vApps are the next generation of virtual appliance, covering a broad and diverse range of virtual applications created by ISVs, developers, enterprise admins or IT professionals.
Anyone using VMware vSphere or vCloud Director can use the vApp to encapsulate a multi-virtual machine application. ISVs can use VMware Studio to create vApps that can be automatically updated and maintained by VMware vSphere or vCloud Director.
What is a Virtual Appliance?
Virtual appliances are 'ready to run' software stacks (made of operating systems and applications) packaged as virtual images that can be deployed easily in cloud infrastructures. A few of the better known virtual appliance vendors are BitNami and JumpBox.
Virtual appliances run on virtual machines (VMs). Each physical machine or server can contain one or more virtual machines. The virtual machine manager is called a hypervisor. There are many types of hypervisors - Xen, KVM, Vmware, VirtualBox.
A virtual appliance is a pre-packaged VM that contains the operating system and the application components. It can be shipped as an OVF (Open Virtualization Format) package that can be easily deployed on various VMware platforms.
Why use Virtual Appliance?
Virtual appliances dramatically reduce the cost of enterprise application deployment by eliminating the need for IT resources required to build, install, configure, secure, and maintain the software stack for each application.
Virtual appliances significantly reduce the time to value for IT departments by providing an "out of the box" application that can be quickly deployed into public, private, or hybrid cloud infrastructures.
What are vApps?
A vApp is a prebuilt software solution consisting of one or more virtual machines (VMs) and applications,
which are potentially operated, maintained and monitored as a unit.
A multi-VM OVF package is called a vApp. For instance, to ship a CRM solution, the vApp can contain the database server VM, application server VM and a web server VM packaged into one unit. The vApp gives application owners a standard way to describe operational policies for an application which the cloud OS can automatically interpret and execute. Therefore, vApps are self-describing to and self-managing on the platform they run. vApps can comprise any applications running on any OS, providing a mechanism to move applications between internal clouds or external clouds while retaining the same service levels. vApps are the next generation of virtual appliance, covering a broad and diverse range of virtual applications created by ISVs, developers, enterprise admins or IT professionals.
Anyone using VMware vSphere or vCloud Director can use the vApp to encapsulate a multi-virtual machine application. ISVs can use VMware Studio to create vApps that can be automatically updated and maintained by VMware vSphere or vCloud Director.
Virtual appliances or vApps created by VMware Studio run seamlessly on VMware products such as VMware vSphere, VMware vCloud Director, VMware Infrastructure, VMware ESXi, VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion, as well as on third-party virtualization products that support the OVF specification.