Gadgetopia

Review: Movable Type Goes Virtuals: Movable Type has made an “MT Appliance” as a VMWare instance.

Virtual Movable Type turns installation into a four-step process: download the virtual appliance from either JumpBox or Six Apart, unzip it on the computer, open the configuration file (.vmx for VMware Player) inside the appropriate virtualization environment, and point a Web browser to the VM’s IP address to get to the configuration page. Enter a machine name for the VM, an administrator e-mail and password, and the time zone information. […]

The actual virtual machine image is called JumpBox. This is the container server—it is running a fairly recent Linux kernel (2.6.x) and has all the required software preinstalled. The software includes the Apache Web server, Perl and PHP with appropriate modules (such as CGI, DB, and SOAP::Lite), MySQL, and the Movable Type software. The JumpBox appliance handles all the port configurations, such as opening up ports 80, 443 and 3000 for Apache. The appliance also sets up the MySQL database and configures the system appropriately so that the Movable Type software can read and write to the tables.