Micro Cloud Foundry Beta Launched By VMware

VMware has announced the availability of a beta version of its new Micro Cloud Foundry platform as a service (PaaS) offering.

Available as a free download, Micro Cloud Foundry is a complete version of VMware’s Cloud Foundry that runs on a developer’s Mac or PC.

The new offering enables developers to build end-to-end cloud applications locally, without the hassles of configuring middleware while preserving the choice of where to deploy and the ability to scale their applications without changing a line of code. Cloud Foundry, announced in April, is an open PaaS solution that delivers access to modern, high-productivity frameworks and features a rich ecosystem of application services from VMware, third parties and the open-source community.

Cloud In A Microcosm

Micro Cloud Foundry runs directly on a developers’ machine and offers developers a choice of frameworks, application infrastructure services and clouds in which to deploy applications, Jerry Chen, vice president of cloud and application services at VMware, said in an interview with eWEEK.

“VMware recognises there is a new generation of developers looking for a simpler approach to building and testing their applications,” Charlotte Dunlap, an analyst with Current Analysis, said in a statement. “With this technology, VMware supports the growing need for developers to work on their laptops with an open, lightweight platform that minimises configuration requirements and speeds application development.”

“Today VMware is taking another significant step forward in delivering a modern cloud application platform ideal for the hybrid cloud environment, by delivering the industry’s only PaaS solution that can be run on an individual developer’s laptop,” Chen said in a statement. “Micro Cloud Foundry gives developers a full cloud development environment that combines all the flexibility of local development with the ability to deploy and scale their applications anywhere in the future.  Micro Cloud Foundry gives developers the ability to build cutting-edge cloud applications while exploring the latest developer frameworks and application services without configuration hassles.”

The first version of Micro Cloud Foundry supports: Spring for Java; Ruby on Rails and Sinatra; Node.js; Grails and other JVM-based frameworks, including Scala Lift; and MongoDB, MySQL and Redis application services. VMware plans to include support for additional VMware vFabric services in future versions of Micro Cloud Foundry

In a blog post about Micro Cloud Foundry, Steve Herrod, chief technology officer at VMware, said: “Many developers are already using the Cloud Foundry open-source bits to build their local versions of Cloud Foundry. Micro Cloud Foundry will make this process significantly easier and will enable developers to easily ‘shrink the cloud’ to their local machine and experiment with cutting-edge technologies without the hassles of installations and configurations.”

Third Cloud Foundry Piece

Micro Cloud Foundry is the third element of Cloud Foundry to become available. The first two, which debuted April 12, are CloudFoundry.com, a public cloud PaaS environment; and CloudFoundry.org, an open-source project that allows developers and community members to collaborate and contribute to the Cloud Foundry project.

Micro Cloud Foundry supports Cloud Foundry’s scriptable command line interface and integration with the Eclipse-based SpringSource Tool Suite (STS), which allows developers to retarget deployments between on-premise and public environments without code modifications, Chen said.

Available as a downloadable virtual machine image, Micro Cloud Foundry is compatible with VMware Fusion for Mac OS X and VMware Workstation and VMware Player (available as a free download) for Linux and Windows computers. It provides easy installation, setup and virtual machine management.

Meanwhile, the interest in CloudFoundry.com continues to grow with the number of beta users more than doubling and the number of applications more than tripling since the offering was unveiled in April 2011. CloudFoundry.org has already received hundreds of material contributions from the open-source community, including additional frameworks and languages such as Erlang, JRuby, PHP and Python as well as data services such as Neo4J.

VMware will provide regular Micro Cloud Foundry updates to include additional frameworks and services. VMware continues to drive core innovation to Cloud Foundry by adding new frameworks and languages, such as Lift and Scala, as well as releasing a Hyperic plug-in for Cloud Foundry that provides increased monitoring and visibility to applications.