Bitnami Vulnerability Database integrated with Trivy

A journey towards comprehensive vulnerability assessment

Authored by Juan Ariza, Senior member of technical staff

Bitnami images and the CVE Security Feed for Bitnami Components

Bitnami-packaged container images are well-known and trusted for being secure, hardened, and ready to use. They are built with best practices, put through extensive automated tests and verifications to run in their target platforms with the expected behavior and performance, and delivered as ready-to-use packages. Furthermore, they are kept up to date with the latest official upstream application versions and this has enabled Bitnami to offer updates including security fixes even before CVEs were announced or detected by the scanners on numerous occasions. In addition, they are continuously scanned to detect security vulnerabilities in the sources and components used by the application. The results of all these tests and validations are available for the enterprise version of these packages through the VMware Tanzu Application Catalog UI. 

Open Source Software (OSS) scanners have consistently identified most of the CVEs that impact our images. Nevertheless, because of Bitnami components’ custom build and packaging, some vulnerability scanners have struggled to detect vulnerabilities in them.

To better enable vulnerability scanners to detect vulnerabilities in our components, we have launched the Bitnami Vulnerability Database, a public CVE security feed available on GitHub with extensive information about the vulnerabilities on Bitnami components. 

Behind the scenes of Bitnami Vulnerability Database

In July 2023, Bitnami published its first CVE security feed — Bitnami Vulnerability Database — which is available on its public GitHub repository.

As part of getting this vulnerability database set up and ready to go, our team had to analyze how some popular scanners work, identify gaps in them, research how to make those scanners locate Bitnami Software Bill of Materials (SBoM), explore available vulnerabilities sources; and took inspiration from other public CVE security feeds available on GitHub such as the Golang Vulnerability database. After collecting the needed information, we created a cron job that uses the data from the National Vulnerability Database (NVD). This cronjob would extract all the CVE data required for analyzing Bitnami’s packaged applications, tools, and libraries, which enables us to report the vulnerabilities affecting each Bitnami component, and periodically update them.

Bitnami Vulnerability Database follows the Open Source Vulnerability schema — a standard format for distributing vulnerability information for open source — to create the JSON files that will assemble the security feed. Additionally, this enables the inclusion of the Bitnami Vulnerability Database as a part of the aggregated vulnerability database available at the Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSV). We see this as a significant accomplishment that can benefit our users as this initiative has been developed in collaboration with Open Source communities and has been adopted by several important security advisories. Also, this makes it possible for any security scanner that supports OSV schema to consume the Bitnami CVE security feed. 

As a culmination of all this work, we have been able to set up the Bitnami CVE security feed on GitHub, which can be browsed by anyone to find information about vulnerabilities in Bitnami components.

Integration of Bitnami Vulnerability database with Trivy

Trivy v0.42.0 came with support for analyzing Bitnami images’ SPDX files, and since then Trivy has been able to detect Bitnami SBOMs. However, Trivy couldn’t report vulnerabilities affecting the Bitnami components described in the SBOMs till now, as there was not a Bitnami CVE security feed available. 

After the Bitnami Vulnerability Database was published, the Bitnami team actively collaborated with Trivy to include this security feed as a part of its scanning capabilities. This enhancement was added as an experimental feature on version v0.45.0 and highlighted on Trivy release notes:

Trivy announcement of the Bitnami Vulnerability database integration 

Bitnami container images have a long-standing reputation for trustworthiness and security, consistently adhering to industry best security practices. We take pride in this integration, as it enhances users' awareness of Bitnami components, which have been specifically designed to contribute to a more secure software supply chain.

Trivy becomes the first security scanner to consume Bitnami Vulnerability Database but the journey doesn't end here. We will continue working on ensuring other popular security scanners consume it. Meanwhile, users who don’t use Trivy as their primary vulnerability scanner can also consume it since it is publicly available and works with any security scanner that supports OSV schema, and there are already a few scanners that have capabilities for detecting Bitnami SBOMs.

Support and Resources

Refer to the Bitnami and VMware Tanzu Application Catalog documentation to learn more about Kubernetes and Bitnami Helm charts and containers. 

To solve the problems you may have with the Bitnami community packages — including deployment support, operational support, and bug fixes — please open an issue in the Bitnami Helm charts or containers GitHub repository.  Also, if you want to contribute to the catalog, feel free to send us a pull request, and the team will check it and guide you in the process for a successful merge.   

If you are interested in learning more about the enterprise version of Bitnami packages — VMware Tanzu Application Catalog —  check out the product webpage, Tech Zone page,  application library, and additional resources. If you would like to get in touch,  contact us.

VMware to acquire Bitnami

We are proud and excited to announce that VMware is acquiring Bitnami!

This is fantastic news for our users and partners. We will continue to deliver the Bitnami catalog of apps that you know and love, across all the platforms we currently support, including all the major cloud vendors. Joining forces with VMware means that we will be able to both double-down on the breadth and depth of our current offering and bring Bitnami to even more clouds as well as accelerating our push into the enterprise.

We built Bitnami from zero to a significant user base, with all of the major cloud vendors as customers. We primarily bootstrapped the business, having raised just  $1.1M from YCombinator and a handful of great angels, when we were already profitable. We have a great team, great products, and a great business. Why join forces with VMware? This was actually an easy decision and has to do with our shared vision for the future.

Our mission at Bitnami is to make awesome software available to everyone, everywhere. There is a lot of great software out there, much of it open source, that is out of reach of many developers and system administrators because it is too complex to set up and maintain.

Our focus is to make that software accessible to the largest number of users and developers possible. We started with native installers that ran on Windows, Linux, and macOS. After a few clicks, users could get a complete web application such as WordPress up and running in their laptop without having to manually install and configure Apache, MySQL, PHP, and supporting libraries. Over time, we expanded to VMs, cloud images, and containers while maintaining our focus on keeping applications easy to use, secure, and up to date.

Over the past years, we expanded our focus to help enterprises use Bitnami in production, often as part of a migration of their application to the cloud or their adoption of Kubernetes. We realized that, if we wanted to continue to grow, we would have to raise money, as building an enterprise salesforce is not easy to do when you are bootstrapped. This was a decision we didn’t take lightly, but not raising money had its own risks, including potentially missing a window of opportunity in the industry.

As part of the fundraising process, we were approached by several vendors in the space to make strategic investments or, in some cases, join forces. While this was not our original goal, as part of the conversations that we had during this process, we realized that VMware would be the ideal partner for us. We both believe in a Kubernetes and multi-cloud future. We both share large enterprise customers, including cloud service providers. We both are building products and services to help companies navigate this multi-platform, multi-vendor world with a focus on enterprises. VMware already has more than 500,000 customers globally!

What really sealed the deal for us was getting to know the team at VMware: smart, talented and driven. This positive personal chemistry was tremendously important to us as founders. When you have been building a company over a decade, you want to make sure it is the right home for the team and product.

So what does it mean for you, our users and partners? In a way, nothing is changing. We will continue to develop and maintain our application catalog across all the platforms we support and even expand to additional ones. Additionally, if you are a company using Bitnami in production, a lot of new opportunities just opened up. Get in touch!

Startups are a team sport. Bitnami has become what it is today thanks to the hard work of an incredible team that we have assembled over the years and that has stuck with us through all the ups and downs of the startup rollercoaster. For some of them, this was their first job out of college, and they have grown professionally over the years to become great managers and engineers, alongside the company itself. We cannot think of a better way to continue their contributions and career growth than as part of VMware, an industry leader.

We also want to take this opportunity to thank those who believed in us from the beginning. We were fortunate to have an incredible group of investors and advisors who have supported us along the way, and would like to especially thank the following people for their unwavering support: Jesus Blanco, Armando Pauker, Peter Courture, Joe Brescia, Clemens Buss, Beau Vrolyk, Elad Gil, Othman Laraki, Diego Basch, Jun Li, Eric Hahn, Ullas Naik, Hiro Maeda, Mike Olson, Michael Hughes, Marten Mickos, Michael Levit, Ali Rowghani, and the entire Y Combinator team.

Erica, Daniel, and the Bitnami team

Bitnami Parse Server Stack now includes Parse Dashboard!

We are happy to announce a new feature available in the Bitnami Parse Server Stack:

Following the suggestions made by the users of the original stack, we have included the Open Source project named Parse-Dashboard, which we believe will improve the overall user experience of this stack. 

The Parse Dashboard is a web interface that helps developers interact with the Parse Server API in a graphic way. With the dashboard, developers will be even closer to the experience available before migrating from the original Parse Hosting Services. 

With Bitnami, developers can easily deploy a ready-to-run Parse Server Stack, now including a beautiful web GUI, with just one click. To get started, choose from our all-in-one free native installers (for Linux), virtual machines and Cloud Images.

If you have questions about Bitnami Parse Server Stack, please post to our community forum and we will be happy to help.

WordPress 4.5 "Coleman" now available from Bitnami!

We're happy to announce a new version of Bitnami Wordpress Stack:

WordPress is a popular blogging software and powers more than 10% of all websites globally. Developed by Automattic, WordPress rose to popularity quickly because of it’s up-to-date development framework, extensive feature set, multilingual publishing ability, multi-author support, and thriving community. Thousands of free and commercial themes and plugins are available to extend and personalize WordPress for just about anyone who needs a website.

A few of the major changes in this new version include:

• Finer points: Customizer improvement
• Finer points: Visual Editor improvement
• Finer points: Comment refinement
• Finer points: Optimization of image generation
• Developers: Selective refresh
• 
Developers: Backbone and underscore update

• Developers: Embed templates 
• Developers: Term edit page changes 


What's new?

• Posts: Inline link editing

• Posts: Additional editor shortcuts
• 
Comments: Moderate comment screen refresh

• Comments: Max length for comment form fields
• 
Comments: Comment error page navigation

• Appearance: Responsive preview of your site

• Appearance: Theme logo support
• 
Appearance: Selective refresh

• Appearance: Easy of use


Under the hood:

• Bug fix: Support Windows shares/DFS roots in wp_normalize_path()
• Bug fix: OPTIONS request to REST API does not return correct Accept header
• Smart Image resizing
• JavaScript library updates
• Script Loader improvements

You can learn more information about this release in the WordPress blog.

With Bitnami, you can deploy a ready-to-run Wordpress Stack with just one click. To get started, choose from our all-in-one free native installers (for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X), virtual machines and Cloud Images for Amazon EC2, Azure, CenturyLink, Digital Ocean, Google Cloud Platform, vCloud Air and 1&1 Cloud Platform.

CanvasLMS joins Bitnami!

We are happy to announce that CanvasLMS is now available on our app catalog!

CanvasLMS is an open-source Learning Management System (LMS) application that integrates multimedia course content in an easy environment.

It is built using Ruby on Rails as the web application framework and PostgreSQL as the database. Everything is included on the Bitnami Stack. 

CanvasLMS also offers the following features:

• Allows you to create courses with student assessments like quizzes or surveys.
• Provides a virtual space for your class where you can post the student grades and track the progress using a friendly interface.
• Its design adapts for mobile phones so you can connect everywhere.
• It has an user-customizable navigation.
• You can configure many automated tasks so you can reschedule jobs and avoid repetitive work

CanvasLMS is now ready to install in a few clicks with the Bitnami CanvasLMS Installers, Virtual Machine images (VMs), cloud images for Amazon EC2, Azure, vCloud and Digital Ocean

You can try CanvasLMS by launching a free cloud demo server. If you are interested, click on the following button to create a 1 hour free server:

Our September Bitnami Power User: Bob Stolzberg

We sat down with Bob Stolzberg of CenturyLink, a Principal Engineer (and avid fan of Bitnami's JBoss and Tomcat Blueprints) whom we worked with closely during our Bitnami Blueprints launch on the CenturyLink Cloud. After learning about our ‘Power Users’ monthly feature he contacted our COO directly to express how much he loves Bitnami resources. Naturally, we jumped at the chance to offer Bob our September Power User spot!

Bob is the ultimate evangelist. If there is ever a chance to utilize our web apps and stacks on a daily basis around the CenturyLink office he is the first one to recommend us. Check out a helpful blog post he recently authored, “Spinning Up Servers and Performance Monitoring in Minutes.”

He kindly got on the phone to walk our team through CenturyLink’s amazingly optimized Cloud Platform where our Bitnami Blueprints live. It’s incredibly easy for CenturyLink fans to navigate and deploy Bitnami Blueprints on their cloud platform, which made them a natural fit for a Bitnami partnership. The Bitnami Team is stoked to present Bob’s Power User Q&A. Read on and learn more about one of our favorite CenturyLink engineers, Bob Stolzberg:

What is your occupation? 

Principal Engineer at CenturyLink

What are your hobbies? 

In my spare time I enjoy hunting, fishing, metal detecting and spending time with my family.

Why did you start using Bitnami, and for what purposes? 

I started using Bitnami to automate the installation and configuration of a stack through Blueprints on the CenturyLink Cloud. A developer can rapidly ‘spin-up’ a LAMP stack (for example) in a low-cost environment, craft a blueprint that calls the Bitnami Blueprint as a base (everything is scalable and interactive), and have their customer information automatically configured every time. It’s very apparent that, much like CenturyLink, Bitnami is focused on speed and productivity.

What projects are you currently working on? 

Lots. :) Recently, I was involved in the task of helping to integrate Bitnami Blueprints with the CenturyLink Cloud. The magic of [CenturyLink’s] control panel is that you can easily/quickly configure and download Blueprints in under 1 minute. It was a fun project to work on as I’m a personal fan of both.

Do you have any favorite stacks/apps in the Bitnami Library? 

LAMP, MEAN, WAMP, Magento, Piwik, WordPress. Most recently I deployed Piwik to share project updates with a small team of developers and contractors inside CenturyLink.

How do you evangelize the Bitnami brand to peers/friends? 

I tell all of my friends and coworkers about Bitnami whenever I’m provided the opportunity. Just makes life simple and incredibly easy to install software.

We love to hear hear from our users, and we would love to hear about your personal experience with Bitnami as well. Feel free to reach out to us, and you might just be the next Bitnami Power User!

Find us at VMWorld 2015 - SF, CA

We’re speaking at VMWorld 2015! Join us for the vCloud Air Hackathon (VMworld’s first hackathon) and lunchtime talk. The hackathon is open to all VMworld attendees.

Bitnami will be co-presenting a session on “Dev Ops Awesomeness with Bitnami” with Nitin Saxena, Director of Solutions Marketing from the VMware vCloud Air team. We’ll be demonstrating how easy it is to get started using vCloud Air using the Bitnami Launchpad, as well as how to build scalable container-based applications using the Bitnami Container images for Docker, Kubernetes and vCloud Air.

Our talk will be on Wednesday 2nd September at 12:30pm in the Dev Ops @ VMware area. Can’t make it? We’re at Moscone all week and would love to connect and give you a limited edition Bitnami t-shirt!

Need a pass for VMworld 2015? Use registration code VMWDEVDAY for a complimentary one day pass for Wednesday 2nd September. 

Registration is here. See you there!

'Take 5' with Code Dx Founder Ken Prole

Ken Prole, CTO at Code Dx, sat down with our team to discuss the passion and inspiration behind his popular software assurance and analytics tool. The goal behind Code Dx was to deliver a product that would solve real problems for real people. Ken and his team identified the problems that many developers confront with application quality and security testing such as difficult installation, expensive tools, and having to use multiple tools which makes it hard to compare results.

Learn more about Code Dx and Ken’s journey that led to a successful company in our latest ‘Take 5’ with the Founder:

What advice would you offer to any soon-to-be startup founders out there?

You need to understand your user’s pain points and needs very well. This means getting out of the office and talking with people. Listen carefully to how things are being done today and what challenges your solution can solve for them – this creates your value proposition. Then implement that solution, incrementally, starting with the MVP (Minimal Viable Product), always working closely with users for feedback. Don’t be afraid to pivot and change direction as you get more feedback. Your early customers are critical for turning your idea into a product that actually solves someone’s needs. Also look for mentors. Reach out to people who have had success growing a startup. They’ll likely be more open than you think to help and might even join your Board of Advisors, which is another important tip for success.

What was your original source of inspiration when you started Code Dx?

We saw a bunch of tools appearing to help developers detect quality and security issues, but there was nothing to bring all those results together and various studies by NIST and NSA were showing that a collection of tools gives you much better coverage. DHS Science & Technology Directorate shared the same vision and were instrumental in funding our initial research and development through their Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

What problem will your product solve? + How does it matter in the market?

Code Dx is a software vulnerability management tool. It helps developers, software testers and security analysts find software vulnerabilities, prioritize them and assign them for remediation before the attackers can exploit them. For developers, we embed Code Dx right into your IDE so you can find the vulnerabilities early in the SDLC. As a result you write better quality code so your software doesn’t crash or perform poorly, as well as more secure code, so that vulnerabilities are detected before the bad guys find them. There are plenty of software scanning tools out there already, but we developed Code Dx to respond to specific challenges those tools present. The challenges we heard most often from people getting started in application quality and security testing were that (1) tools are too expensive and licensing restricts its usage by line-of-code or number of projects; (2) tools are difficult to install, configure, and interpret the results; (3) no single tool finds everything and when using multiple tools it is very difficult to compare results. We solved these problems with Code Dx and feel it is helping the overall quality and security tool market since now people can more easily consume the results of multiple tools.

What is your one-line pitch?

Code Dx finds, prioritizes, and visualizes software vulnerabilities – fast and affordably.

Describe the experience of your first customers?

Finally getting a product into the hands of real users solving real problems is what it’s all about. Seeing how our first customers used Code Dx was enlightening to us. We saw how our vision actually helped users do things they couldn’t before. It helped validate that Code Dx was a product that fulfilled someone’s needs. We also learned what frustrated users with our early versions, and used that feedback to make Code Dx even better. That’s what we continue to do today. So try out Code Dx and let us know what you think!

Now for the lightning round!
Coffee or tea?
Coffee in morning, tea in afternoon.

PC or MAC?
PC and Android for me. I feel like more and more colleagues are switching to MAC, but I haven’t been able to make the switch yet.

Early bird or night owl?
Kids have made me an early bird, but I can still do the night owl thing when needed.

Bagels or muffins?
Bagels, especially on Bagel Friday.

Classic or modern?
Modern

Detailed or abstract?
Abstract.

Washing dishes or doing laundry?
Washing dishes. Laundry is such a process.

Saver or spender?
Saver.

Hardwood or carpet?
Hardwood

Pancakes or waffles?
Waffles

Asking questions or answering questions?
Asking questions as the answer.

Javascript or C?
Anything but going back to C programming.

Our August Bitnami Power User: Nick McElligott

We’re excited to announce our August ‘Bitnami Power User', Nick McElligott! Nick went from having little to no backend server knowledge to CTO in a matter of months. He uses Bitnami as a resource to explore different installation environments and experiment with server setups.

Nick is an evangelist for Bitnami, not only because we make server software easy to use, but also because we make a wide variety of applications available on many different platforms and back it up with solid documentation and customer support.

Our support team is all about great user experience, so we love when people ask for help or advice! If you ever have a question about one of our stacks, visit the Bitnami community page and we’ll help you out ASAP.

Read on to learn more about Nick’s experience:

What is your occupation? 

Right now I'm an IT Consultant. I am a consulting CTO for a few small companies (all under the same ownership) and consult for my previous full time job in a full stack dev role.

What are your hobbies? 

• beer 
• basketball (especially NBA Spurs, and NCAA KU - rock chalk!)
• blacksmithing (shout out to watersidemetalart.org) 
• juggling and unicycling 
• bar hopping
• traveling 
• Indian food 
• programming (javascript is my favourite atm)

How would a novice programmer best use Bitnami as a resource? 

Most of the resources and tutorials on the internet are focused on front end (HTML/CSS/JS) and back end (PHP/Python/Ruby/C#/Java/DB etc) development. There are very little great tutorials on backend server stuff like how to get going with Linux install/setup/usage/concepts, the command line usage, Apache installation/setups/best use, MySQL install/setup and general server management, backups, monitoring, and architecture etc. All that stuff is usually learned on the job with experience. It’s hard to teach from a video and hard to learn without actually doing it and going through it all - something that most people would find prohibitive and not worth the payoff. 

When I got my first job at Spark Digital, I hadn’t touched any servers. I was thrown in the deep-end and was the only programmer in the whole building. Initially the existing sites were setup on shared hosting environments where we had little control over the environment. Within 6 months we had decided that we wanted to move over to a VPS provider and discovered Amazon. Since I didn't have any experience, we looked to Bitnami.

How did Bitnami fulfill your needs and where did you first hear about us? 

Bitnami has a billion different server images for all kinds of different products and services. However I would expect that most users don't use a fraction of all the different images available. Most people are in an industry and do a specific type of thing. Much of the value I got from Bitnami was that you could trust that the images were setup in a best way possible, documentation is amazing, and your support team goes above and beyond the call of duty.

Your Support Team really pushed me over the edge to fully love Bitnami. I can't tell you the amount of times they have saved me. It’s honestly insane. I'd love to see how many emails have been sent back and forth between us. The team was awesome, knowledgeable, intelligent, understanding and so much more. Please tell your support team that they are amazing, and if it weren't for all their hard work, I'd simply be a front end dev, not a full stacker.

What projects are you currently working on? 

Personally- I've been looking into RFID stuff using a RaspPi and using a LAMP backend. I may even take a look at switching over to a MEAN stack. RFID is such an empty market, and there are so many opportunities there, its exciting. Other RaspPi stuff and home automation is another area where I have interest. 

Professionally- I've just started playing with Visual Studio and C#, its a lot of fun. Working with a full fledged IDE has been interesting, but playing with a C based lang has been great.

Do you have any favorite stacks/apps in the Bitnami Library? 

Nothing in particular. I'm more familiar with a LAMP stack though.

We love to hear hear from our users, and would love to hear about your personal experience with Bitnami, as well. Feel free to reach out to us, and you might just be the next Bitnami Power User!

Announcing the Bitnami Launchpad for DigitalOcean

We’re pleased to announce the Bitnami Launchpad for DigitalOcean, which furthers our mission of making deploying applications to the cloud seamless. This new option provides developers with over 100 fully configured applications and development stacks that are ready-to-run on the DigitalOceancloud platform in minutes.

The Bitnami Launchpad is free for DigitalOcean users. You will be charged solely for the infrastructure resources you consume, with no additional cost for the Bitnami solutions built on top of that infrastructure. Bonus: New users can claim up to 2 months of free service credit to use when signing up. Use promo code BITNAMI.

Get started now: 

• Create a free Bitnami account or sign in to select an application or development stack 
• Sign up for a DigitalOcean account 
• Launch images directly from Bitnami Launchpad for DigitalOcean

Security Release: Magento 1.9.2.1

The Magento project has just released a new community version that includes the latest security patches: SUPEE-5344, SUPEE-5994, SUPEE-6237, SUPEE-6285, SUPEE-6482. It is recommended that you apply those patches or upgrade to the latest version of the application. For more information about the security issues fixed with those patches check out this helpful user guide. 

We have released Bitnami Magento 1.9.2.1 installers, virtual machines and Amazon EC2, Google, Azure and VMware vCloud Air cloud images that fix these issues.

If you already have a running version of Bitnami Magento, you can upgrade the application following the steps detailed on our wiki page.

To learn more about this new version, you can read about them on the Magento release notes. Have questions about Bitnami Magento? Post to our community forum, and we would be happy to help you. 

Security Release: WordPress 4.2.4

The WordPress project has just released a new version due to a security release. WordPress versions 4.2.3 and earlier are affected by six issues, including three cross-site scripting vulnerabilities and a potential SQL injection that could be used to compromise a site. 

It also includes a fix for a potential timing side-channel attack and prevents an attacker from locking a post from being edited.

In addition to the security fixes, WordPress 4.2.4 contains fixes for 4 bugs from 4.2.3. You can find more information at the Release Notes.

The WordPress team strongly encourages their users to update their site to this version. For more details please check the official announcement. If you already have a running version of Bitnami WordPress, the application will be automatically updated. You can confirm that the update has been done by checking the version from your admin panel.

We have released Bitnami WordPress 4.2.4 (and Multisite version) installers, virtual machines and Amazon EC2, Google, VMware vCloud Air and Azure cloud images that fix these issues.

Have questions about Bitnami WordPress or the security issue? Post to our community forum, and we would be happy to help you.

Bitnami Cloud Sysadmin Bootcamp 3rd edition

We are happy to announce the third edition of the Bitnami Cloud Sysadmin Bootcamp. In case you are not familiar with Bitnami bootcamps, it is a fast-paced 2 week course that provides you with the knowledge and practical skills you need to automate the installation and management of server software, with an emphasis in the cloud. You will learn directly from developers and system administrators responsible for systems that manage tens of thousands of servers.

Bitnami Cloud Sysadmin Bootcamp will be taught in-person in our Seville, Spain office. The classes will take place from 9am – 2pm then we will break for lunch and in the afternoon we will have time for hands-on practice, typically until 6 – 7pm. We will have some guest instructors for specific topics and some of those classes may happen in the afternoon.

Apply for 2015

The following areas will be covered:

• Linux system administration: from the basics to advanced topics such as security and performance tuning
• Security administration basics: SSL/TLS, ssh, control access
• Server deployment: Apache, nginx, MySQL, PostgreSQL
• Server application deployment: Java, PHP, Python, Ruby and NodeJS runtimes
• Cloud deployment on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCE) and OpenStack
• Containers deployment with Docker and Kubernetes
• IT automation with Ansible
• Modern software development with Phabricator, GIT

We would like to repeat the same great experience from previous editions. You can find more information about Bitnami Cloud Sysadmin Bootcamp 2015 here.

Bitnami Open Source Leaders Interview Series: Matthew Weier O’Phinney for the Zend Framework Project

We recently interviewed Matthew Weier O’Phinney, technical lead for the Zend Framework Project. Zend Framework, a product of Zend Technologies, is an open source web framework implemented in PHP 5. Zend Technologies was founded by two Israeli college students with a love for the PHP language. From humble beginnings to becoming a leading provider of products and services for developers around the world, learn about Zend's history and their aspirations for the future.

Listen and Learn:

• How Zend was originally envisioned 
• Zend Framework's competitors and what they're doing 'right' 
• Predictions surrounding the introduction of Middleware 
• Zend Framework's scalability and relationship with different environments 
• Various release strategies over time 
• How to take part in the community and become a contributor

Interested in learning more about open source frameworks options? Visit our stacks page for available apps and what's in the pipeline!

Stuart Langridge:       These are the Bitnami Open Source Leaders Series of Interviews.  I'm Stuart Langridge, and I'm talking to Matthew Weier O'Phinney, who is technical lead for the Zend Framework Project.  So, the obvious question to start out with here is, who is Zend, and what's the Zend Framework?

Announcing the Bitnami Launchpad for VMware vCloud Air OnDemand

Bitnami is dedicated to making it super simple to run awesome applications and development stacks in the cloud. That's why today we're pleased to announce support for the VMware hybrid cloud "VMware vCloud Air" alongside the leading public cloud providers we already support.

The Bitnami Launchpad for vCloud Air gives you instant access to more than 100 popular applications, pre-configured and optimized for vCloud Air suitable for small, medium or large companies. The launchpad includes line-of-business applications and developer stacks that, combined with the vCloud Air platform, can take your next project from zero to production in record-time.

If you are looking for a production-ready cloud that is fully compatible with your onsite data center, you’ll want to check out this new offering.

Get started in 5 minutes or less

1. Sign up for VMware's Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand service 
2. Create a free Bitnami account or sign in to select an application or development stack
3. Launch images directly from the Bitnami vCloud Air OnDemand Launchpad 

The Bitnami Launchpad for VMware vCloud Air is free to use. VMware will only charge you directly for the cloud resources you consume. New to VMware? New users can claim a $300 service credit with vCloud Air to use during the first 90 days.

Watch this short video for a step-by-step tutorial on how to get up and running.



Ready to run your favorite app on VMware vCloud Air OnDemand now? Get started! Sign up for VMware vCloud Air OnDemand. Already tried it? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Now available at Bitnami: Invoice Ninja

We are pleased to announce that Invoice Ninja, the powerful open-source application for creating invoices, tracking time, and accepting payments online, is now available in the Bitnami marketplace under the accounting category. Invoice Ninja enables small businesses and freelancers to simplify the process of getting paid by creating fully customized, professional-looking invoices online in seconds. No more fiddling with payment gateways or tedious manual time tracking- Invoice Ninja does it for you!

Some of Invoice Ninja’s key features:

• Unlimited clients, invoices, quotations
• Tasks & One-click time-tracking
• Professional looking invoice templates
• Add your company logo to customize invoices
• Customize color schemes to match your brand
• Integration with Stripe, Paypal, Dwolla, Authorize, & 30+ payment gateways
• Clients can convert quotes to invoices & pay online
• Support for recurring payments
• Support for multiple currencies and languages
• Set taxes per item line or invoice total
• Alerts & tracking when invoices are viewed & paid
• Invoice product/item library management system
• Clients can view their invoices & payment history
• Set invoice payment due to partial or full amounts

Start tracking your time and creating invoices in just a few clicks with the Bitnami Invoice Ninja installers, Virtual Machine images (VMs), and cloud images for Amazon EC2 and Microsoft Azure.

Bitnami Open Source Leaders Interview Series: Eli White from php[architect]

We recently interviewed, Eli White, co-owner of the popular tech journal, php[architect] and key influencer in the PHP world. php[architect] is the only magazine exclusively dedicated to the world of PHP offering books, web training, and conferences aimed at spreading knowledge and unifying the community.

From PHP’s early beginnings to running 82% of the web today, learn about the creation and resurgence of this popular language.

Listen and Learn:

• How did PHP, with a seemingly “bad” reputation, became a fully featured object-oriented language? 
• What does movement towards cloud deployment mean for PHP? 
• How to get involved in your local PHP community/meetup group

Interested in learning more about PHP and popular applications such as LAMP and Wordpress? Check out our library of Bitnami packaged apps that use PHP (plus exclusive training from php[architect])!

Stuart Langridge:       These are the Bitnami Open Source Leaders Series and Interviews.  I'm Stuart Langridge, and I'm talking to Eli White, who's one of the co-owners of php[architect] and a pretty big noise in the PHP world generally.  How's it going, Eli?

Eli White:                    All right. It's going well.

Stuart Langridge:       One of the things I want to talk about here is that PHP has something of a bad reputation, but it has a bad reputation among people who don't know anything about it. Specifically, the language as well as the structures have changed quite dramatically since a whole bunch of people wrote PHP in about 1999.  Can you talk a little bit about what's changed and how?

New to Bitnami: ProcessMaker Enterprise

We are pleased to announce that ProcessMaker Enterprise Edition is now available in the Bitnami Library!

ProcessMaker Enterprise Edition is a workflow and business process management (BPM) platform designed to automate workflows and improve business efficiency. Technology leaders looking for a way to replace paper forms, cumbersome excel spreadsheets, and scattered email approval trails can now automate a wide variety of approval request forms and workflows quickly and easily through Bitnami and ProcessMaker Enterprise edition. If you are a Business Analyst or IT Director in search of a solution, this is a tool that should not be missed.

The Bitnami ProcessMaker Enterprise Edition comes with a 30 day trial license, so you are welcome to try it out for yourself. You can now install a few clicks with the Bitnami ProcessMaker Enterprise installers, Virtual Machines, and cloud images for Amazon EC2 and Google Cloud Platform. If you want to check out ProcessMaker Enterprise Edition, simply launch a free cloud demo server. Click the button below to get your own instance running for 1 hour, free!

Information on how to manage your installation can be found on our wiki. Still have questions? We would be happy to answer them on our community forum.

Try YouTrack by JetBrains - for free

YouTrack by JetBrains gives you the ability to manage everything related to your team’s projects, and it is now easily accessible from the Bitnami Library! From project releases to bug tracking, YouTrack can do it all. Each of YouTrack’s features will allow your team to be as productive as possible while having as much fun as possible. And we can’t forget to mention that it comes with Scrum and Kanban, right out of the box. Some other features include:

• Powerful query language with completion and highlighting for smarter issue search
• Agile board with Scrum and Kanban support
• A live Dashboard with widgets for reports, issues, and notes
• Multiple report types for more effective project management and analysis 
• Built-in image editor to quickly crop, highlight, and annotate screenshots 
• Flexible customization with powerful workflows and custom fields
• REST API for automated operations and integration with third-party applications

With Bitnami YouTrack, your team can use all the features that YouTrack has to offer for free! The free version provides a full set of features for up to 10 users, including custom logos, and can be used for business purposes as well.

Get YouTrack now in just a few clicks with the Bitnami YouTrack installers, Virtual Machine images, and cloud images for Amazon EC2 and Google Cloud Platform.

If you want to check out YouTrack, you can launch a free cloud demo server. By clicking the button below, you will have your own YouTrack instance running for 1 hour, for free!

Don't forget to visit our wiki to learn how to manage your installation. Still have questions? Head over to our community forum for answers.

Bitnami applications available in the OpenStack Community App Catalog

Today the Open Stack Foundation announced a new resource for sharing applications and developer tools during a keynote at the OpenStack Summit. The Community App Catalog — now available in beta — is open for contributions and will be curated by the community.

Five Bitnami stacks are featured the inaugural community catalog, including MEAN, Jenkins, Ruby Stack, LAMP Stack, Wordpress. This gives cloud users and developers point-and-click access to the applications, as well as a way to collaborate and access new technologies in the OpenStack ecosystem.

Bitnami is pleased to be a part of the effort to make installing cloud stacks and apps easier, alongside products from ActiveState, Google, Oracle and RedHat.

Have you explored the community catalog? We’d love to hear what you think. Share your opinion in the comments below. Or read the announcement from the OpenStack Foundation to learn more.