Reference Information › Appliance Catalog Reference Guide › System_ms Catalog › Generic Appliances › WIN8: Generic Windows Servers

WIN8: Generic Windows Servers

Functional Overview

WIN8 for the various supported versions is a general server appliance that can be branched to make new server appliances: singletons or server classes.

Each version includes a reasonably complete installation of its OS, including the GCC compiler if available. This allows installing and building software on the branched appliances.

The generic server appliances are designed to be used in two ways:

• As a customized server by branching the base class to form singleton and modifying its class volume appropriately
• As a template for building other server appliances by using it as a base to create new application-specific or global catalog classes.

Important! Server means virtual server. Virtual servers are similar to appliances in all aspects except intent (virtual servers are made to be logged into for the installation of additional software) and volume size (much bigger than appliance's volumes).

The WIN8 appliances are not currently distributed with CA AppLogic. For additional information on creating appliances, refer to the Appliance Developer Guide.

The WIN8 versions are as follows:

Resources

Terminals

Note:

• One use of the net output is to connect it to the Subnet Output Gateway to download software to be installed on the server. Once you are finished installing, you can disconnect the gateway or make it standby.
• If you branch one of the server appliances to create your custom appliances, you may want to remove the unnecessary interfaces.

Volumes

Servers have only a boot volume -- instantiable class volume. There are no placeholder volumes. However, when you branch this class to create a customized server, you can add a placeholder volume.

Notes

For additional information on the operation of Windows appliances, refer to the Appliance Developer Guide.

Note:

• The appliance hostname (set to appliance instance name) cannot be longer than 15 characters. If set to more than 15 characters, the hostname truncates to the 15th character.
• By default, Windows appliances use a random Administrator password for security purposes. If needed, you can change the password as described in the Windows Appliance Notes.
• The Windows Server appliances generate a new random password whenever the appliance class name changes. If you want to disable this behavior, open a Cygwin bash shell on the running appliance and edit the script /appliance/appliance.sh and insert a line exit 0 after the initial comment block.

3rd party open source software used inside of the appliance

In the appliance, WIN8 uses the following third party and open source packages from Cygwin as well as third party and open source packages which may be installed with Windows itself.