Sharing VMs and Images

One of the key benefits of using Virtualization technology is that it allows developers and other project participants to share images of virtual machines with other team members. This enables complete development or production environments to be shared eliminating the need for each participant to install the tools and do configuration and shortens the development cycle. You should learn how to use images provided by others and how to make snapshots of your own virtual machines and share them with others. You should explore the repositories of images available in places like DockerHub, Amazon Web Services or via Vagrant and become familiar way that VM images are shared with the wider world.

Goals/Objectives/Outcomes

• Understand the principles that are common to all types of Virtual Machine Image sharing
• Understand how to use VM Image repositories as a base for new projects
• Understand how to take snapshots or create images of Virtual Machines
• Understand how to share virtual machine images with others on a team
• Understand how to create publicly shareable images and how to publish them for wider use

Reference Material

• http://www.sysprobs.com/create-virtualbox-image-share-upload
• https://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/boxes.html
• http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/AMIs.html
• https://hub.docker.com/

Measures of Success

• Participant has demonstrated the ability to work with virtual machine snapshots and images
• Participant has demonstrated the ability to use an external image repository to bootstrap their own project
• Participant has demonstrated the ability to create an image of their own virtual machine and share with others
• Participant has explored the ecosystems of shared images and applications on AWS, Docker, Vagrant etc