It happened again to me this morning. A user requested that we put “some kind of web survey software” on out Intranet. This is a trial so we do not know whether or not this will be in place long term or if it will even work.

Outside the fact that we do not have an Intranet in our office, normally a tech person would either flat out say, “No!” or start looking for something that would specifically work in their environment.

Depending on the environment that you are working in, this could end up being a very costly test.

But, what if you were to have a number of servers with various configurations sitting in a massive closet somewhere ready to plug into your network and get you up and running? This would cut down your build time and your would be able to use whatever software you want.

This is precisely what I do in order to create test systems in a really quick turn-around using VMware and virtual servers/appliances.

Get the Software

In order to do this, I downloaded the free VMware server software and installed it on a spare workstation. If you do not have a spare workstation, you can install it on your own workstation. Since these are virtual servers, you can move them to another computer running VMware server at any time without having to rebuild the entire system.

Select Your Software

It is now time to find the perfect software for what you would like to do. Once you have done this, you can then create the proper virtual server to support this software.

This may seem to be a bit backwards for many people because most are accustomed to being constrained to the network resources that they are presently working with. This way completely opens up for you what you can use.

Create Your Templates

Once you have created a base system, do not immediately install the software on it that you want to use. Rather, create a snapshot of the server and then shut it down. Go to your virtual machines folder and create a folder called Templates. Copy (don’t move) all of the files that you have just created for your virtual machine to the Templates folder.

You now have a copy of your new server that you can duplicate at any time and add the duplicate to your inventory for customization.

Whenever you need a base system that is significantly different from any of the template systems that you already have, simply build it from scratch and then add it to your templates for later use.

Use Prebuilt Virtual Appliances

On the VMware website, there are a large number of prebuilt virtual serve appliances that may save you a ton of work. These are systems that have been created by various people that are ready to go as is. This means that you could have a complete system ready to go in the time that it takes you to download the appliance!

Track Your Server Templates

It is important to know what is on each of your server templates so that you do not duplicate effort. This can be something as simple as an Excel spreadsheet that looks something like this:

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