EGI Application Database :: Wiki

Software categories/technical classification: Application, Tool, Science gateway, Workflow, Middleware product

Virtual Appliances (VAs) are ready-to-run virtual machines packaged with an operating system and software application(s)

A Virtual Appliance version (VA version) provides a list of the versioned Virtual Machines Images (VMIs) that constitutes the said Virtual Appliance. Each VA version is further distributed and therefore mapped, to a single – and unique within the EGI AppDB – Virtual Machine Image list.

A Virtual Machine Image List is the SMIME X509 signed, JSON representation of a Virtual Appliance Version.

A Virtual Machine Image (VMI) is the software implementation of a machine (i.e. a computer) that executes software application(s) just like a physical machine

Software Appliances (SAs) is composed by a Virtual Appliance and a Contextualization Script pair

A Contextualization Script (CS) is the script launched on VM boot time and could be used for installing, configuring and preparing software upon boot time on a pre-defined virtual machine image