Virtual Appliance: UDA 2.0 Beta

These are the new features in UDA 2.0:

 

ESX4 Support
Thanks to Mike Laverick!

Solaris Sparc Support
Thanks to Bevan Brown and his team for sending in the solaris sparc details.

Based on Centos 5.3
The UDA is now based on an enterprise ready Linux distribution.

First Boot Wizard
Turn on the appliance and it will run a wizard that lets you configure the UDA before it tries to access the network.

Improved User Interface
Well, that’s personal of course, just check it out and let me know what you think!

Operating System Flavors
You can now add as many operating system flavors as you want. Many people on the forums asked about how to get e.g. Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional on the UDA at the same time. It was possible by changing/remounting the ISO files and some manual fiddling, but now you can add as many as you like.

Subtemplates
You can now specify a list of variables and values and use them all within the same template. You will not have to add a new template for every new system anymore. (You’ll need documentation to use this, but that is not ready yet 🙂

PXE password
If you are using the UDA in an environment where you do not want all users to have access to the templates using PXE boot, you can use a menu password.

Mounting 256 ISO files
On the forums we’ve seen people having troube with a ‘no free loop devices’ error. This was caused by the UDA not having enough reservations for mounting ISO’s. You can now mount up to 256 iso files at the same time.

Add VMware Tools from the web-interface
Tell the UDA where your linux.iso file is containing the vmware tools and it will install them for you.

Manual Configuration
Lots of people were creating their own additions for bootable floppies over PXE. Good stuff that would break when the UDA regenerated the boot menu. Now you can manage your manual configuration from within the web-interface (and they will stay on the menu :-).

Easily extend diskspace
Extend the space for the local storage or the UDA system volume by adding as many virtual disks as you like. Use the webinterface to activate the new disks

Use the CDROM station(s) in the UDA virtual machine
You can now add a cdrom drive to the UDA virtual machine and it will detect it.

More info and the latest version can be found here: http://www.ultimatedeployment.org/uda20beta.html