JumpBox: The Virtual Machine Factory

When you’re into software development, a lot of work is involved in building the environment to program the app. It’s not just the hardware; you need to build every block of the software required before starting the project. One economical way to tackle this situation is by using virtual machines. JumpBox provides virtual machines of all types and configurations.

A JumpBox is a “ready-to-use” virtual machine that will run in minutes on any computing environment that supports virtualization. Follow me after the fold to learn how JumpBox could help you save a ton of money and time with their many virtual machines.

Overview

Running your open source applications as JumpBoxes gives you a great number of advantages over running traditional installs built from scratch. Primary among them is the huge amount of time you can save by not having to build from the ground up. All JumpBox downloads are compatible with all major forms of virtualization like VMware, Parallels, Microsoft, Xen Open Source, VirtualBox and Amazon EC2.

Once deployed a JumpBox delivers a fully-functional instance of an application that you can start using right away. Virtual Machines come with key components built in. For example, if you are going for LAMP based app, say Drupal, a virtual machine will have the Linux OS, Apache web server, MySQL database and PHP among other requisites preinstalled. All you have to do is run the JumpBox and work on the app you want.

The Library

JumpBox claims to have the world’s most complete selection of “ready to use” open source server software. And this statement of theirs could be very true since they have more than fifty-five different open source apps spanning all major product categories in the library.

If you’re looking for an application that’s not currently in the library, you can leave a request. Based on the popular request, new apps are added to the library from time to time.

Pricing

You’ll have to choose from two of the paid plans starting from $49 per month. Runtime support is the major difference between the Pro and Business plans. There are no free plans at JumpBox, but there is a free trial period of 15 days with each account. Credit card information has to be submitted while signing up, but it won’t be charged till the free trial is over. If you’re planning to avail Amazon’s cloud services, you’ll have to pay extra.

Getting Started

After a ridiculously simple sign up process, a status page with links to a detailed demo and the account page is displayed. The dashboard displays key information regarding your account including the license key. Some JumpBoxes will require a license key during initial configuration, so keep it close by.

Hit the Library link at the top to get going. In this page you will find a list of featured jumpboxes. If you don’t see something you are looking for, navigate through the extensive list of categories on the left pane to find it. For the purpose of this article, I chose to go with a JumpBox that runs WordPress.

A page detailing the capabilities of the JumpBox follows next. In the same page, you will find all the necessary technical information of the JumpBox including the size, the operating system of the virtual machine and the like. Since these are virtual machine images, the sizes run into few hundred MB and above depending on the app you have chosen.

For those planning to use Amazon Elastic Cloud, you are in luck. JumpBox offers to install the virtual machine directly on your EC2 account. You can sign up from the same page and install it too.

Running the JumpBox

To run the JumpBox on your system, you will need to install Oracle Virtualbox or VMware player. Both of them are free to download and I chose VMware player for this review.

Once the download is complete, head over to the folder and extract the zipped archive. After extracting, double click on the vmx file and sit back to enjoy the infrastructure that is being deployed.

Depending on the processing power of the system, the JumpBox load time will vary, but it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes in either case. Point your browser to the IP address shown on the screen to configure the JumpBox.

The details required mostly pertain to the app that you are installing and in my case, I was asked for the admin password and email information along with the time zone information.

Using WordPress from JumpBox

Use the WordPress admin login and blog URL links to access them. I tried the admin control panel and was pleasantly surprised to see it is no different from the window that I am currently composing this article (hosted on Media Temple) and the one running from a JumpBox on my desktop.

It was very smooth and responsive and has the same features of a latest WordPress distribution.

JumpBox Administration

Use the JumpBox Administration Portal to perform various system level tasks. The link might throw a SSL error in the web browser, but hit Proceed Anyway to access the admin panel.

From this intuitive Graphical User Interface you can change the host name, configure email relaying, enable SSH/SFTP, install an SSL certificate, turn on stats or configure automated backups. The interface and the tools available in the admin panel are identical across the entire library making it easy for users handling multiple virtual machines.

Final Thoughts

JumpBox allows you to work more efficiently and focus your energy on the activities that matter. Whether you’re downloading JumpBoxes to run locally or launching them in the cloud via Amazon EC2, they share the same two-minute deployment experience. Instead of recurring monthly payments, pay per download of JumpBoxes would be an awesome addition that would help many a people.

Share Your Thoughts!

What is your take on JumpBox? How much time and money will be saved by going with JumpBox instead of building from scratch?