Glossary

A Single running copy of an Operating System on a physical or virtual server machine on which any number of VAAs may be accessed.

(Source: Wikipedia) A virtual appliance is a minimalist virtual machine image designed to run under some sort of virtualization technology (like VMware Workstation, Citrix XenServer, VirtualBox or many others). Virtual appliances are a subset of the broader class of software appliances. Like software appliances, virtual appliances are aimed to eliminate the installation, configuration and maintenance costs associated with running complex stacks of software. A key concept that differentiates a virtual appliance from a virtual machine is that a virtual appliance is a fully pre-installed and pre-configured application and operating system environment whereas a virtual machine is, by itself, without application software.

AppZero has pioneered the VAA which encapsulates an application and all of its dependencies for instant provisioning of a server-based application. Unlike a VA, AppZero VAAs contain zero operating system.

A virtual machine is a virtualized server emulating real or fictional hardware for an unmodified guest OS. The virtual machine is installed as an application on the host OS. Applications are installed normally in the virtual machine environment, and are unaware that they exist on a virtual machine (as opposed to a physical machine) – all of the OS duties needed by the application are performed by the virtual machine (not the host OS).

Virtual to physical migration (V2P) describes the process of installing a virtual environment (i.e., virtual machine) onto a physical server.