TurnKey Linux Virtual Appliance Library

The 6 appliance build types: ISO, VMDK, OVF, OpenStack, OpenVZ, Xen

For your convenience, TurnKey provides appliances in multiple build type formats. Most users will find a build type optimized and pre-tested for their exact usage scenario, hardware or virtualization platform!

Build type Packaging Installation Kernel Extras Works best with...
Generic ISO ISO Live CD image Custom installer (di-live) linux-generic  

Bare metal hardware

Any virtual machine that can install from CD or CD image.
VM optimized (default)

ZIP file containing a writeable VMDK disk image and a VMX VM configuration file

 None (pre-installed, ready-to-run hard disk image) linux-virtual (PAE) VMWare tools

VirtualBox (use existing hard disk)

Low-end VMWare products (Player, Workstation, Server)
VM optimized (OVF)

Zip file containing a read-only, compressed VMDK disk image and an OVF VM configuration file

 Import OVF linux-virtual (PAE) VMWare tools

VirtualBox (import appliance wizard)

High-end VMWare products (ESX, vSphere)
OpenStack

Tarball containing  filesystem image, kernel and initrd files

 Extract tarball, register AMI with Glance (blog post) linux-virtual (PAE) ebsmount, preseeding OpenStack
OpenVZ

Tarball containing appliance filesystem optimized to run inside an OpenVZ container

 ProxMox VE: apply patch to add TurnKey channel (blog post) n/a preseeding

ProxMox VE (patch available to add TurnKey channel to 1.9)

Other OpenVZ based private cloud and virtualization solutions....
Xen

Tarball containing appliance filesystem optimized to run as a Xen domU guest

 Varies between Xen setups n/a preseeding Any Xen based private or public cloud...

VM optimized images

These are images optimized for deployment on Virtual Machines, using popular virtualization software (e.g., VirtualBox, VMWare, Parallels).

Features

  • Pre-installed: Appliance is pre-installed to a VMDK hard disk image.
  • linux-virtual kernel: Contains an ubuntu kernel optimized for virtualization. This kernel does not contain bare metal hardware drivers and runs in PAE mode so it can address more than 4GB of memory even in 32 bit mode.
  • Includes VMWare tools: VMWare tools contain drivers which improves performance when running an appliance under VMWare. When running under VirtualBox or other virtualization platforms, the included VMWare tools are not used.

Pros and cons

  • The main advantage: easier setup as no installation step is required. Better performance on VMWare out of the box.
  • The main disadvantage: can't be deployed to non-virtualized bare metal hardware.

Flavors

VM optimized images are available in two closely related formats:

  1. Default VM build: this is primary VM build offered for download.
    • Disk image: Ready-to-run, writeable VMDK hard disk image.
    • VMX VM configuration file: VMX is a VMWare-only Virtual Machine configuration format.
    • Compatibility:
      • VirtualBox: supports adding the VMDK as a virtual hard disk. The VM hardware (e.g., RAM) has to be configured by hand as VMX is not supported by VirtualBox. See the virtualbox installation tutorial.
      • Low-end VMWare products: VMX is point-and-click on VMWare Player, VMWare Workstation, VMWare Server.
  2. OVF build: this is the default VM build converted to OVF with VMWare's OVFtool.
    • Disk image: read-only, compressed VMDK hard disk image.
    • OVF VM configuration file: OVF is a standards-based Virtual Machine configuration format.
    • Compatibility:
      • VirtualBox: supports OVF via an import appliance wizard which converts the OVF to a native VirtualBox format. The conversion process takes a few minutes.
      • High-end VMWare products: OVF is supported by high-end VMWare products such as ESX and vSphere.

Generic ISO

A single master image format that can be installed anywhere.

Features

  • Custom installer (di-live): can install appliance to any available storage device.
  • Live CD demo mode: allow users to try appliance without installing.
  • Generic kernel: includes bare metal hardware support, and most types virtual machines (e.g., VMWare, VirtualBox, Xen HVM, Parallels).

Pros and cons

  • The main advantage: a single universal image format that works anywhere.
  • The main disadvantage: an ISO needs to be installed by hand and includes no out of the box virtualization optimizations.

OpenStack builds

TurnKey builds for the OpenStack cloud platform.

Features:

  • EBS auto-mounting support: we've updated our custom EBSmount mechanism for OpenStack, which automatically mounts EBS devices when attached.
  • Support for automating instance setup: via the user-data scripts mechanism.
  • Automatic APT configuration on boot: saves bandwidth costs by using the closest package archivefor maximum performance.
  • SSH key support: instances that are launched with a key-pair will be configured accordingly.
  • SSH host key fingerprints displayed in system log: verification of server to prevent man-in-the-middle (mitm) attacks.
  • Randomly generated root password: is set on first boot, and displayed in the system log **.
  • Randomly generated mysql/postgres passwords: the MySQL root and/or PostgreSQL postgres passwords are set to to the same random password as root **.
  • Instance metadata python library and CLI: used internally, but useful for advanced users. (learn more).

** Because OpenStack builds are used in headless deployments (without a console), they include an inithook which preseeds default values, and random passwords.

See the OpenStack builds announcement for more details.

OpenVZ builds

TurnKey builds optimized for OpenVZ-based lightweight virtualization solutions. A TurnKey channel for ProxMox VE is also available.

See the OpenVZ builds announcement for details.

Xen builds

TurnKey filesystem tarballs optimized to run as domU guests in Xen based  private or public cloud setups.

See the Xen build announcement for details.