Yesterday, I needed a simple proxy and firewall for a test setup on ESX 3.0 (release version). I used the IPCop virtual appliance that can be found on the excellent www.vmwarez.com. To download it yourself, just go here. There are versions for VMware Workstation or Player but also a version for ESX 2.5.2.

I decided to download the version for Workstation and then to move it to ESX 3.0 using VMware's Virtual Machine Importer 2.0 Beta 3. You can download the importer from here. I just wanted to play around with the importer a bit.

Importing the virtual machine went perfectly. It is a simple wizard that asks for the vmx file of the source virtual machine and then asks questions about the destination. I gave the wizard the name of our VirtualCenter 2.0 server so I could place the virtual machine in the correct folder. A few minutes later it was done and I am now running IPCop on ESX 3.0.

After importing the virtual machine in ESX 3.0, you will have a 2GB disk and two network cards. The first network card is the internal one (GREEN), while the second is the external one (RED).

This clearly shows the advantage of the concept of a virtual appliance in practice. I had a need for specific functionality and within minutes, the job was done. Great stuff!