Friday, September 21, 2012

Server Cloning, Custom Firewalls and Other New Features in BitNami Cloud Hosting

We have been hard at work improving BitNami Cloud Hosting, our platform for deploying and managing the BitNami Application Library in the cloud and we are pleased to announce the release of several new features:

Server Cloning


The new 'clone' button allows you to make an exact copy of your server in one click. This is great for testing out new code or updates on an exact clone of your production server. It also allows you to make a copy of your server in a different AWS account, in case you have separate accounts for development and production, or if you separate accounts for separate customers and want to be able to re-use work you have done for one for another client.

The clone button appears at the top of the Manage Server screen for each of your servers.

Server-specific Firewall Rules



Many of you requested the ability to set special firewall rules on a per-server basis, rather than have the same rules apply to all of your servers. We're happy to report that this functionality is now available in BitNami Cloud Hosting, as shown above. The new Firewall tab in the Manage Server screen allows you to add custom firewalls just for that server, or to edit the default firewalls for it. This feature allows you to add additional security to your server by controlling access to it.

Server Status Details


The new Server Status Details dialog lets you see exactly what is happening to your server, both during the build process and once the server is launched. To access this dialog, click on the "more info" link next to the Status indicator on the Manage Server screen.

In addition to the above features, we have made a number of improvements on the back-end to speed up the  build process as well as the user interface. Stay tuned for several more improvements to the UI that make it even faster and easier to use!

Don't have a BitNami Cloud Hosting account yet? Sign up for free and you'll have your cloud server up and running on the Amazon Cloud in minutes!

Thursday, September 20, 2012

BitNami Makes it Easy to Try Infoworld's BOSSIE-Award Winning Apps

At BitNami, we carefully select what we believe to be the best open source applications across a range of categories, so you know that any app that you get from BitNami will be of the highest quality. It seems that Infoworld agrees with our selections - out of 25 applications selected for the 2012 Infoworld Bossie Awards (Best of Open Source Software,) 10 are available on BitNami and an 11th is already in the works!

We would like to congratulate the teams building the following BitNami-packaged applications for earning Bossie Awards:


As with all BitNami Stacks, all of the above applications are available free of charge as native installers, virtual appliances (VMs) and AMIs for the Amazon Cloud. In particular, the VMs and AMIs make it incredibly easy to test these best-of-breed applications in minutes without actually installing them in your system. Even if you choose to use the native installers, you will see that they are completely self-contained and install all of their dependencies in their own directory, so they won't interfere with other software installed on your system.

Do you agree with Infoworld's list? If you think there is a great open source business application that isn't available in the BitNami library, let us know in the comments.

Friday, September 14, 2012

BitNami Trac v1.0 released, Managing Users now easier

We have just released an updated BitNami Stack for Trac 1.0, the latest stable version of the popular bug tracking system. In the previous release candidate, we added Git support and now we also ship the popular Account Manager plugin.

If you are not familiar with Trac, it is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects. The project’s mission is to help developers write great software while staying out of the way.

The recently added Account Manager plugin offers features for managing user accounts easily:
  • Enable authentication through a number of built-in authentication resources and some more by 3rd party extensions
  • Allow users to register new accounts
  • Allow existing users to change their passwords

Account Manager plugin in action

As usual, Trac is now available in the form of ready-to-run installers, virtual machine images (VMs) and Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) for the Amazon Cloud.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Updated BitNami AMP Stacks for PHP development

We have just released updated versions of all of the BitNami AMP Stacks, which include a number of major updates and additions. If you are not familiar with the term, "AMP" stands for Apache-MySQL-PHP. The name of each BitNami AMP Stack depends on the operating system; there is WAMP for Windows, MAMP for OS X and LAMP for Linux.

We also release "APP" versions of these stacks, which include the PostgreSQL database instead of MySQL. As with the AMP Stacks, the APP Stacks are named differently for each operating system: WAPP for Windows, MAPP for OS X and LAPP for Linux.

All of the above BitNami Stacks have been updated to include the latest stable releases of their major components, which are listed below. We also offer development versions of the stacks which bundle beta or brand-new releases of the components. They are great for trying out the latest and greatest new releases in a contained environment.
  • Apache 2.2.22  (or 2.4.3 in the development version)
  • PHP 5.3.16  (or 5.4.6 in the development version)
  • MySQL 5.5.21
  • phpMyAdmin 3.5.2.2
  • PostgreSQL 9.1.3 (optional)
  • phpPgAdmin 5.0.4 (optional)
In addition to the above, the stacks bundle the following PHP frameworks for development:
  • ZendFramework 1.12.0
  • Symfony 2.0.17
  • CakePHP 2.2.1
  • CodeIgniter 2.1.2
  • Smarty 3.1.11
Smarty is a new addition to the stacks with this latest release. It is a template engine for PHP, facilitating the separation of presentation (HTML/CSS) from application logic. This implies that PHP code is application logic, and is separated from the presentation.

Check our new Quick Start Guide to know how to start with BitNami AMP/APP Stacks.

Welcome page
Applications page

As usual, the BitNami AMP Stacks are available in the form of ready-to-run installers, virtual machine images (VMs) and Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) for the Amazon Cloud. You can also get simplified deployment and management of AMP / APP development environments in the cloud with BitNami Cloud Hosting. Sign up for our free developer plan to check it out!

Run Your Favorite BitNami Apps on the Virtacore Cloud


We are happy to announce that your favorite BitNami applications are now available on the Virtacore public cloud! Virtacore is a leading cloud provider, with over 10,000 virtual environments under management running across Equinix datacenters in Los Angeles, San Jose, Chicago, Washington, DC and London.

Virtacore's cloud platform is based on VMware's vCloud, which means that you can move applications between an internal vCloud deployment and Virtactore's public or private cloud platforms as your resource requirements change or as applications move through the development / test / production cycle.

BitNami and Virtacore have selected over 20 of the top BitNami applications for publication on the Virtacore platform, the first 8 of which are already available. The remaining applications will be rolled out over the next several weeks. As with other BitNami Cloud Images, the BitNami apps for Virtacore are available free of charge to users.  

Sign up for the Virtacore public cloud platform to give it a try!

Monday, September 10, 2012

Join Us at the Liferay Symposium in San Francisco


Liferay, a leading open source portal, web content management and collaboration software package, is a popular application in the BitNami library and we are happy to announce that we will be participating in the upcoming Liferay Symposium on October 8th and 9th in San Francisco. If you are using Liferay or looking for a new portal solution, the Liferay Symposium provides a great opportunity to hear from industry leaders as well as learn about Liferay and get to know others in the community. Unlike many tech conferences, a complete track is dedicated to case studies, so there will be plenty of information on how people are using Liferay in the real world. One of those sessions will be led by BitNami CEO Erica Brescia, who will present on whether or not running Liferay in the cloud is right for you.

View the complete agenda and register now to make sure that you get a spot! We do have a handful of FREE passes available for BitNami users who are running Liferay. If you are interested in a free pass, send an email to info at bitnami and we will let you know if we have any more available.

To get a free installer or virtual appliance or to deploy Liferay to the cloud, visit the BitNami Liferay Stack page. We hope to see you at the conference!

Friday, September 7, 2012

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About BitNami AMP Stacks

If you are already a BitNami user, you know that BitNami AMP / APP Stacks allow you to automatically set up an Apache, MySQL (or PostgreSQL) and PHP environment in minutes. While we strive to make all BitNami Stacks as intuitive to use as possible, we realize that good documentation is also important. We have just put the finishing touches on a new user guide for the BitNami AMP Stacks that summarizes everything you might want to know about the Stacks, including how to login to the components, how to stop and start the servers, how to install BitNami Modules on top of the Stacks and more. It also outlines the components included - did you know that BitNami AMP Stacks include the Zend Framework, Symphony, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Smarty and a range of other components? Check out the new documentation for all of this information and more.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

BitNami Trac now with Git bundled

We have just released the new BitNami Trac Stack 1.0 'Cell' Release (rc1). This version adds Git support among other improvements:

- Refreshed user interface
- Branching structure displayed in the revision log
- Ticket batch modification support

BitNami Trac Stack 1.0rc1 already includes Subversion and now ships Git and of the required dependencies to make it easy to get started with either repository.

Trac project with Git support

It can be deployed using a native installer for Windows, OS X or Linux, as a virtual machine or in the Amazon cloud. Thanks to the Amazon Free Tier, you can try BitNami Trac in the cloud for free for one year with BitNami Cloud Hosting.