rPath extends rBuilder support to Xen-based Amazon EC2 grid

In its endless effort to support any existing virtualization platform on the planet, rPath just added Xen-based Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) to its long list.

Quoting from the official announcement:

rPath, provider of the first platform for creating and maintaining software appliances, today announced rPath’s rBuilder™ support of the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) from Amazon Web Services. rPath’s integration with Amazon EC2 marks the first time that software appliances have been combined with an on-demand computing infrastructure.

It will work like this: software developers use rBuilder to build an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) that is stored using the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Then, with a single click, rBuilder and rBuilder Online users can boot their software appliances on Amazon EC2. No more waiting for downloads or fighting with complex installation procedures…