RPath
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- The correct title of this article is rPath. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.
rPath, Inc. is a technology company based in Raleigh, North Carolina. rPath™ provides a platform for software vendors to create and maintain software appliances and virtual appliances.
The rise in server virtualization offers a new model in IT operations. With rPath, software vendors can create software appliances in multiple virtual machine formats. Each software appliance contains a purpose-built operating system and all the components it needs to run in a virtualized environment. This allows end users to gain the full benefits of virtualization.
[edit] rBuilder Online
rBuilder Online is a free public service provided by rPath, with the stipulation that any development work done using rBuilder Online becomes public as well. rBuilder Online enables you to create software appliances, virtual appliances and derivative Linux distributions based on Conary.
rBuilder can create:
- installable images
- hard drive images
- LiveCD bootable images
It creates virtual images in the following formats:
- VMWare
- Microsoft VHD
- Virtual Iron
- Parallels
- Xen
- Amazon AMI - to run in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
[edit] Conary
rPath is the developer of the Conary software packaging and management software. Conary is the core of rBuilder, and it combines package management and Software Configuration Management methods to manage software packages. Conary includes features such as rollbacks, changeset (incremental) updates, and a distributed development model which replaces the need for programs such as apt-get or yum.
[edit] History
rPath was founded in 2003. Since rBuilder became publicly available in 2006, a number of popular appliances have been created, including a MediaWiki appliance, a network monitoring appliance, Openfiler, AsteriskNOW, and even entire desktop distributions such as Foresight Linux.
