ArchivistaBox VM: OpenSource Installation CD

Pfaffhausen, 28 August, 2009: We shipped the first ArchivistaBox Summits before the summer break. In the meantime (after a restful company break with a side trip to Berlin and the Baltic Sea), we have built several additional ArchivistaBox Summits.

At several presentations, we were asked a number of times if there is a CD for the product. On these occasions, we pointed to the Proxmox CD. Meanwhile, we have made a specific ArchivistaVM CD available and are now happy to offer the ArchivistaVM CD. I'd like to explain here why we decided to offer an ArchivistaVM CD for download.

This is why we offer a CD for download

First of all, the role model is and remains Proxmox. And yes, we understand that if we offer our own CD for download here, we are basically starting a "fork" from Proxmox. Yes, and generally a fork shouldn't be picked frivolously. But we want to move our virtualisation solution in a slightly different general direction from that taken by Proxmox. We find that, for example, OpenVZ is not really great and that the menus for regular users aren't particularly helpful. We want to offer a virtualisation platform in KVM — no more and no less — and have therefore removed OpenVZ.

Further, it bothers us that KVM only runs with processor support. So we removed that option as well. Not primarily because we believe that you can work fine without processor support, but because for testing and training we would like to set up an ArchivistaVM in an ArchivistaVM environment — and that wasn't possible so far. By the way, with the ArchivistaVM you can "easily" operate a VMPlayer instance on the side on a guest, so that you can have an ArchivistaBox running virtually in it, and in turn create an Archivista CD within that virtual box.

What does the future hold?

So far, we have made rather small changes. In the future we would like to give our solution a new kernel, and we are also envisioning an improved user concept. Ultimately, however, our customers decide every day which direction the development of our products takes, and this will also continue to be the case with the ArchivistaVM CD.

Mostly, we are therefore happy to ship our proven ArchivistaBoxes together with the virtualised ArchivistaBox Summit. As stated before, the ArchivistaBox Summit offers noticeably more performance than the ArchivistaBox Eiger has done to date. You can put into operation the ArchivistaBox Summit together with the virtualised ArchivistaBox Eiger VM; and all that (incl. installation) for the current price of the ArchivistaBox Eiger. And, of course, you can also run several other instances (whether 32 or 64-bit, whether Linux and/or Windows) at the same time.

Support for the ArchivistaBox Summit

If you want to purchase a completely ready-to-use ArchivistaBoxVM, you can purchase an ArchivistaBox Summit at any time. In addition, you then also receive maintenance and guaranteed response time for support. We cannot, however, offer support for the ArchivistaVM CD. After all, handbooks and support forums are planned.