At the end of August VMware finally released its authoring product Studio 2.0, which virtualization.info covered at the end of July.
This new Studio introduces the support for vApps, the next incarnation of the VMware Virtual Appliances (VA), and a number of additional, welcome features:
- Support for vSphere 4.0 (including both ESX and ESXi hosts), Server and Workstation as provisioning engines.
- Support for OVF 1.0 and 0.9 formats
- Support for VA/vApp customization (logo, EULA, first-boot script and user management capabilities)
- Support for virtual machines (previously created with Studio) as input
- Support for Windows Server 2003 and 2008 (32/64 bit)
- Periodically publish critical updates to deployed VA/vApps through VMware Update Manager (VUM)
- Authored VA/vApps have an agent built on a Common Information Model (CIM) Broker and CIM Provider for guest OS management