Development server to the cloud with TKL

Because unless its a really old/low spec machine (or you plan on running something pretty intensive such as Zimbra) then its such a waste of hardware. My favourite right now is Proxmox. ProxmoxVE is a Debian based hypervisor OS which supports both OVZ and KVM virtualisation technologies with a WebUI so is ideal for running headless. There are plenty of other options about though and there is even a TKL VirtualBox prototype appliance (and/or TKLPatch) that has been developed by Rik (and his students AFAIK). As PVE requires hardware support, Rik's VBox appliance is the way to go if it's an older machine or a low power chip (such as an Atom).

Another angle is that if you only plan on using it for development, you probably don't even need to run it on it's own machine, why not just use VirtualBox (or similar) on your workhourse (be it a laptop or desktop)?

As for your questions about pushing to the cloud, depends on exactly what you mean by that. If you mean running a local (development) instance and a production instance running on Amazon then TKLBAM may be the go. If you are talking about a hosted service then it depends how much control you have. If it's a (non-TKL) VPS then providing you can have a very similar (if not identical) setup on the VPS (eg Ubuntu 10.04) then rsync (or similar) is probably your best bet.

As for specific install info, you should find most of that in the TKL docs, or specific issue may be found with forum searches (top-right corner).

That's pretty much it.

#3 - The easiest way to go would be to download the TKL ISO, upload that to PVE (you can do it via the WebUI) and install from the ISO (again from WebUI). Although this way you will be using KVM (which works very well), but IMO OpenVZ is even better.

If you wish to use TKL appliances under OVZ then you will need to create a patching 'workbench' appliance first. Download and install TKL Core (as above). Then install TKLPatch and use the TKLOVZ patch/script (started by me, completed by Adrian Moya) to convert TKL ISOs to OVZ templates (in tar.gz fomat).

Even though it's a bit more mucking around to start with. I would highly recommend running from OVZ. You will find it uses much less RAM and is very reponsive (you'll forget it's a VM!) If you want any more help or need any pointers (including more detailed explanation please don't hesitate to ask. :)

So just to elaborate are these the steps to get running from a dev machine to an AWS instance?

1. Download PVE and burn onto a disk
2. Install PVE
3. Now how do you run a TKL flavor on PVE?  (PVE wiki says "Just go to "Appliance Templates" and download pre-built Virtual Appliances directly to your server. This list is maintained by the Proxmox team and more and more Appliances will be available. This is the easiest way and a good place to start. "  perhaps I am not asking the question in the correct place)
4. Use TKLBAM to backup the TKL installation (/docs/tklbam/example)
5. Use TKLHUB and launch the instance on AWS
6. Use TKLBAM to update AWS

Don't hesitate to post back should you encounter any issues. I can't guarantee I will have the answers but I'll do my best! :)

Thanks Jermey, This is really very exciting!