Document Virtual Machine Library for Developers

Question

I am building a library of virtual machines for development purposes. I need a way to document each virtual machine. When developers need a particular virtual machine they can just browse a catalog and find the most appropriate.

Much of the software we develop is version dependent and we have many customers on different revisions. Instead of each developer spending days reconfiguring their machines when they switch projects they will just be able to grab a virtual machine off the network and run it.

Some pertinent information I think needs to be included:

• Machine Description
• Machine Name
• OS and Service Pack Level
• .Net Libraries Installed
• Installed Software
• User Accounts
• Windows Updates
• Virtual Machine Integration Features Installed

What is the best way to document these virtual machines so that we can easily find the appropriate machine when necessary? Thanks.

Answer 1

Quick and dirty? How about a simple website that can show a table of attributes with one column as a pointer to the VM instance that has the selected attributes? Or, once you have the table, it could become your database that drives a set of attribute selection boxes that cull out a selection of likely VMs?

With this little information, there's really not a "best" way. You might need to talk to your customers to see what works for them.